Disks show as ineligible while adding to the Disk group

[Devrawat2708]

Hello all Vsan experts,

I am trying to test VSAN in my lab and I am facing issues . Need your expert advice.

I have connected 4 HP MSAs together to ONLY ONE of my ESX hosts out of three in my lab cluster. I have created 4 logical raid 5 volumes of 615 GB each . All the volumes are visible on the ESX host.

ESX host 1

ESX host 2

ESX host 3 -> This has the 4 MSAs attached and all the disks reporting to.

I ran the following commands against all the 4 disks on the ESX host to which they are connected.

~ # esxcli storage nmp satp rule add -s VMW_SATP_LOCAL -d <Device_name> -o "enable_local enable_ssd"

~ # esxcli storage core claiming reclaim -d <Device_name>

I configured VSAN on the cluster and created a disk group for the cluster. When I try to add the disks , I can add only 2 disks , one as SSD and one as HDD. The other 2 disks show as ineligible. The message states that there is an existing partition on those disks.

I tried deleting the partitions or fetch information about partitions using the partedUtil command , however I get this as output :-

# partedUtil get /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0

Error: The primary GPT table states that the backup GPT is located beyond the end of disk. This may happen if the disk has shrunk or partition table is corrupted. Fix, by writing backup table at the end? This will also fix the last usable sector appropriately as per the new reduced size. diskPath (/dev/disks/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0) diskSize (1289779602) AlternateLBA (2579558801) LastUsableLBA (2579558768)

Warning: The available space to /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0 appears to have shrunk. This may happen if the disk size has reduced. The space has been reduced by (1289779200 blocks). You can fix the GPT to correct the available space or continue with the current settings ? This will also move the backup table at the end if it is not at the end already. diskSize (1289779602) AlternateLBA (2579558801) LastUsableLBA (2579558768) NewLastUsableLBA (1289779568)

Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!

Unable to read partition table for device /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0

# partedUtil delete /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0 1

Error: The primary GPT table states that the backup GPT is located beyond the end of disk. This may happen if the disk has shrunk or partition table is corrupted. Fix, by writing backup table at the end? This will also fix the last usable sector appropriately as per the new reduced size. diskPath (/dev/disks/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0) diskSize (1289779602) AlternateLBA (2579558801) LastUsableLBA (2579558768)

Warning: The available space to /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0 appears to have shrunk. This may happen if the disk size has reduced. The space has been reduced by (1289779200 blocks). You can fix the GPT to correct the available space or continue with the current settings ? This will also move the backup table at the end if it is not at the end already. diskSize (1289779602) AlternateLBA (2579558801) LastUsableLBA (2579558768) NewLastUsableLBA (1289779568)

Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!

Unable to construct disk from device /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0

Can someone please help here !!

Thanks in advance.

[elerium]

What version ESXi? On the latest 6.0U1, the webclient can erase partitions on disks. Click Host->Manage->Storage->Storage Devices->All Actions->Erase Partitions

On other versions, I have been able to wipe drives by using the thick vSphere client and creating VMFS partitions on the drives and choosing to wipe/use full capacity of the drive for VMFS, then delete the VMFS partition.

[Devrawat2708]

Hello,

Thanks for the reply. I am using ESXi 5.5.

I tried the second option. When I try to create a VMFS partition , I get the following error message :-

===================================

An error occurred during host configuraion.

Call "HostDatastoreSystem.QueryVmfsDatastoreCreateOptions" for object "datastoreSystem-914" on vCenter Server "L4ALABVC01.aonnet.aon.net" failed.

===================================

I see the following message in the vmkernel.log when it fails to create a VMFS5 partition out of the disk.

2015-10-27T22:45:47.289Z cpu1:33266)LinBlock: LinuxBlockCompleteCommand:860: This message has repeated 8320 times: Command 0x9e (0x412fc043dbc0) failed H:0x0 D:0x2

2015-10-27T22:45:51.315Z cpu1:32785)NMP: nmp_ThrottleLogForDevice:2321: Cmd 0x1a (0x412e8042bdc0, 0) to dev "mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0" on path "vmhba2:C0:T0:L0" Failed: H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x24 0x0. Act:NONE

2015-10-27T22:45:51.315Z cpu1:32785)ScsiDeviceIO: 2337: Cmd(0x412e8042bdc0) 0x1a, CmdSN 0x87b2 from world 0 to dev "mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0" failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x24 0x0.

Looking at the HEX code "H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0" , it looks like the device is not ready which is very strange because when I click "Add storage" on the host , I do see the two disks available there. Anyways , I will try to reboot my MSAs and the server . Will update. We may have some lead here.

Thanks,

-Dev

[Devrawat2708]

Hello ,

I tried resetting my HP MSAs and ESX host. Still the same issue. Not sure what those Hex codes mean when they say that the device is not ready. Any idea?

-Dev

[Devrawat2708]

Hello ,

While playing with my partedUtil , managed to fix this issue . In the end it turned out to be as simple as creating a label using the below commands.

~ # partedUtil mklabel  /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0 msdos

~ # partedUtil mklabel  /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T2:L0 msdos

Now these disks are getting added fine to the disk group and no more show as ineligible.

Really appreciate your time and response.

Cheers !!

Thanks

-Dev

[ITMHelps]

7 years later this still holds up and just fixed my issue on ESXi 7.0.3, 20328353.  Thank you for your information.