Problem with big HDD > 2TB

[VirtualUser09]

Hi folks.

I have a new Server with 4,5 TB in RAID 5 and would like to use that for Virtual Machines.

But whatever i do, the local datastore by ESXi cannot be lager than 1,41 TB (I guess 600GB is for Esxi itself).

So is there a 2 TB limit as Esxi is only 32bit ?

I split up my raid and installed Esxi on a 700GB Disk and would like to create another Datastore on the 3TB raid.

But unfortunately, if I use datastore on the first HDD (say 500GB) i can only create another datastore with 900 GB at its maximum.

Vmware Infrastructure shows me that there IS more space on the raid, but it is not available for partitioning nor for assigning a new datastore to it.

Any Way to solve that problem?

I have 6x750 GB SAS and would prefer RAID 5 for all disks, resulting in 3,5 TB diskspace

[Gerrit_Lehr]

Hm, are you sure there are no other partitions on the system? Whats the output of df -h?

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

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[TomHowarth]

the maximum size of a LUN/Datastore in ESX is 2TB this is a limit of SCSI2 not ESX persay. if you need to create extra Local DataStores read my blog post on the subject

attempting to create a second VMFS partition on dev/sda

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Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blog: www.planetvm.net

Contributing author for the upcoming book "[VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment|http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780136083214]”. Currently available on roughcuts

[VirtualUser09]

i would llike to use every single bit on my local raid.

so there is no way to exceed 2TB at all?

[Gerrit_Lehr]

You could create a second VMFS following the posted link.

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

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[AndreTheGiant]

Create more disks each less then 2TB.

Using more partitions may not work.

Andre

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[weinstein5]

No there is not - as Tom indicated this is a limitation of SCSI-2

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[Troy_Clavell · Accepted solution]

i would llike to use every single bit on my local raid.

regardless of the size of the LUN, using up all of the available space will not be a good idea. You should leave some free space (15 - 20%).

[VirtualUser09]

Create more disks each less then 2TB.

Using more partitions may not work.

Andre

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This does not work. This was my second try. Creating disks instead of partitions. But non the less, Esxi does not wont to have more than 2 TB on the same Controller ... I

I did not understand that limit of SAS, why is there a 2 TB limit not affected by Esxi but by the controller ?