ESXi 7.0.1 M.2 Datastore Issue....

[Project951]

I have a brand new Lenovo SR650 server, with the Lenovo M.2 RAID1 SSD enablement kit and (2) 128GB SSD drives in a RAID1 configuration.  I have a fresh install of VMware ESXi 7.0.1 loaded on the M.2 RAID1 array.  When I go under datastores.  The M.2 datastore is not listed:

If I go under devices the M.2 device is listed and is Normal status:

If I try to access the Datastore Browser, the following error is thrown:

Here are the details of the exception:

Any ideas?  I could always see this storage previously with ESXi 6.7.  I also noticed that if you browse under Host/Manage/System/Time and Date and choose the Actions menu item to start the NTP service, the menu item does nothing when you click on it.

I have tried using the Lenovo-customized 7.0.1 ISO and the standard VMware 7.0.1 ISO, with the same results.....

Thanks in advance for any assistance!

[Project951]

I did have screenshots, but they did not post with the question....  Here they are in order:

[ZibiM]

Check what kind of partitions you have on this device

AFAIR there was partition layout change in the vSphere 7 - maybe this is a side effect

[a_p_]

ZibiM is right. New installations of ESXi 7.x consume up to ~130GB disk space on the installation disk. A VMFS datastore will only be created on larger disks.

André

[Project951]

Thanks for the help!  I'll check the partitions the next time I'm in the office...  I thought 128GB would be plenty of space for ESXi.  The system requirements say only 32GB is required...

• ESXi 7.0 requires a boot disk of at least 8 GB for USB or SD devices, and 32 GB for other device types such as HDD, SSD, or NVMe. A boot device must not be shared between ESXi hosts.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

That's the minimum disk size required on a given media.

If you scroll down on the ESXi Hardware Requirements you'll find the usage based on the installation media's size.

The ESXi 7.0 system storage volumes can occupy up to 138 GB of disk space. A VMFS datastore is only created if the local disk device has at least 4 GB additional free space. To share a boot device with a local VMFS datastore, you need to use a local disk of 142 GB or larger.

There's an option to reduce the space (unsupported though) by specifying an "autoPartitionOSDataSize" during installation. See e.g. https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2020/05/changing-the-default-size-of-the-esx-osdata-volume-in-esxi-7..., and my comment there with a suggested size of "autoPartitionOSDataSize=24576"

André

[Project951]

Thanks for the help, André!  Much appreciated!!  It looks like Lenovo does make a 240GB SSD for their RAID1 enablement kit....