Connecting 12TB SAS3 HDD to ESXi 6.5.0?

[doron1]

Hello folks,

Hope I'm posting this in the correct forum. I'm trying to connect a few HGST HC520 12TB SAS drives to an existing ESXi host.

The connection is via an on-board LSI2308 SAS controller chip.

Once connected and booted, the drive seems to spin up. It is seen by the LSI2308 (and can be queried in the 2308 ROM boot-stage setup utility), but once ESXi boots up it does not see it. No such device in /dev/disks or anywhere.

All other drives connected to same controller: 5x 4TB SATA drives and one 300GB SAS drive, are seen and used perfectly well, no issue.

So, just to make sure: Is there a size limit on HDDs supported by ESXi 6.5.0 (build 5310538)? Should the above setup work?

Thanks for any input!

[larstr · Accepted solution]

doron1,

I'm sorry that I don't have a clear answer for you. There are some limitations in regards to large disks, but there have been implemented some support in the latest versions of ESXi. I think you will need to review this article and compare with the specs of your disk:

FAQ: Support statement for 512e and 4K Native drives for VMware vSphere and vSAN (2091600)

Lars

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[doron1]

larstr​, thanks very much for responding.

Indeed the new drives are 4Kn, and my ESXi is 6.5.0, so the article is applicable.

That being said. - would such a drive not being supported manifest itself as not being seen in /dev/disks at all? That's the part that gets me confused. I understand not being able to format or place a datastore; I understand not being able to use them with pRDM. I'm not sure I expected them not to even have a device file associated with them.

Thanks again!

Doron

[doron1]

For closure on this thread - indeed the problem was the drive being 4Kn. Turns out ESXi 6.5 does see the drive during its boot process, but balks at it with "unsupported sector size" and takes it offline, which translates to not even having it as a node in /dev/disks.

I worked around it by passing through the entire controller the drive is hung off of to the guest - which does support 4Kn drives in flying colors.

Thanks again larstr​!

[larstr]

Doron,

Very good to hear that you found a workaround for this issue. Lets hope we'll see a better solution in an upcoming release.

Lars