Accessing raw storage larger than 4TB with ESX?

[DanBriones]

I have a DL380 G6 and I'm booting ESXi 4 from a 4GB SD Card the server is configured with 6 drives 1TB each drive; if I configure 2 sets of 3 drives in RAID 5 no issues but if I configure all 6 drives in a single raid5 esx can no longer see the raw space because it is larger than 4 TB has anyone dealt with this?; I realize that I can only create 2 TB extents in VMFS but I should be able to see the raw space to create these extents right?

[jasonlitka · Accepted solution]

Nope 2TB-512bytes is the limit per physical volume as well as per extent. Carve out 2TB-512b chunks in your RAID controller and add them all to the same VMFS as extents.

Jason Litka

[DanBriones]

Thanks for your quick reply; but if this is true, than there is no efficient way to use large drives, by creating 2x3 drives raid5 I lost 2 TB out of 6 in parity. where is the limitation in accessing RAW space? what do people with large SANS do, or is there nobody out there with storage larger than 2TB? I was told that the 2TB limit was for the installer which is 32 bit but once ESX was installed I should be able to access raw space form my 6 TB SAN and create 2 TB extents that I can glue together up to 64 TB... I cant believe this is correct if so who would buy terrabyte drives?

[jasonlitka]

No, create one array but with multiple volumes. Most controllers have an option to export the array in 2TB chunks for operating systems that do not support larger volumes (or, if your controller doesn't allow that, multiple arrays across all the disks using only part of the space on each).

Jason Litka

[DanBriones]

Thank you Jason; I don't know what I was thinking; I just broke up the array into three logical drives and it came right up; I'll blame it on too many long days and too much stuff going on... thanks for the slap in back of the head, I needed that!

[AntonVZhbankov]

Single LUN can not be more than 2TB-512B, so split your RAID to 2TB LUNs.

The only way to be able to give VM a single LUN more than 2TB is to connect iSCSI LUN with software intiatior from inside the VM. This is frustrationg without any doubts, but this is the way ESX works.

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