Cannot see multiple tgt iscsi disk after connecting to linux iSCSI server

[RubenEGraff]

I am have a hard time figuring out just what is going on .  I have an vsphere 5.1 host and a 5.0 host trying to connect to and Ubuntu 12.0 server running TGT.   The server had a RAID 50 with 24 TB of storage.  I have stripped down the target file to it bare minimum and have no restrictions on connections.

When I do a dynamic discovery it will attach to the target and It shows up under the Paths for the iscsi software adapter, but not storage is presented under storage.    Because Linux ext 4 has a 16tb limit, I tried partitioning the drive into two 12 tb partitions.  after discovery, again I can see both partiions in the paths , but only the second partion shows up in devices.

I then created three partitions, a small part 1 and then two even partions.  Again I could only attach to the last partition

I can attach to that partition,  format it and use it, but I cannot get to the 1st partition.

Finally I created a very small partition and then used the rest of the disk for the second partiion and tried again.  Again I can only see the second partion but the 21 tb shows up.

Since I am presenting a block device, why do I need to partition the drive and why do I only see the last partion?

[continuum]

why do I need to partition the drive and why do I only see the last partion?

good questions - I noticed the same here.
I noticed that ESXi only sees iSCSI targets that are partitioned.

Sorry I have no answers but I think you are lucky that it did not work.
IMHO the LUNs you are planning to use are way to large for a VMFS volume.

In my recovery practice I regularly have to dump full LUNs to have a backup in case the repair goes wrong.
In this respect LUNs over a few TB would prevent recovery attempts as you would need days to dump it.

Cant you create several smaller LUNs with your RAIDcontroller instead ?

[RubenEGraff]

I am trying that approach next creating two RAID 6 Groups with 8 drives each.  In the end I will end up with the same space but I will be losing performance.