ESX4 U2 & MSA2312i with > 2TB Volume?

[The-Kevster]

Hi,

I'm setting up an HP MSA2312i with a 5TB volume over iSCSI. Whenever the volume is bigger then 2TB the available capacity appears as a few hundred GB rather then the full amount. If I create a volume less then 2TB it works correctly, but from looking at the configuration maximums I should be able to configure a volume up to 64TB?

Is this a bug or is there a 2TB limit somewhere that I'm missing?

Thanks for your help,

Kev

[Troy_Clavell]

see the guide below for your maximums.

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_config_max.pdf

[RParker · Accepted solution]

but from looking at the configuration maximums I should be able to configure a volume up to 64TB?

3 misconceptions, and you are confusing and combining siutations.

1) LUNs have a limit of 2TB, Volumes do not. However VMFS cannot go beyond 2TB.

2) 64TB limit is achieved via EXTENTS, that message is in the EXTENTS section, meaning you can combine 32 2TB datastores to make one HUGE datastore, but that's not recommended.

3) The reason the space is not showing up is because some weird error, probably some way to prevent doing what you are trying, which is to force LARGE single volumes over 2TB.

So go back, make the volume smaller than 2TB (1900GB) and then you should be fine.

NFS does not have these restrictions however.. so since you are using iSCSI you can probably use NFS.

[The-Kevster]

Thanks thats really helpful. I last question...

I have 12 X 450GB drives setup in a single virtual disk, so I will need to seperate this into 3 volumes 1900GB + 1900GB + 700GB. Would it be a bad idea to use extents to make this into a single VMFS volume bearing in mind that its only one virtual disk on the array.

Thanks again!

[DSTAVERT]

It is possible but not recommended. It ends up being like a JBOD. Loose one you loose them all.

[RParker]

I have 12 X 450GB drives setup in a single virtual disk

You should be able to do this at the RAID hardware level, so you don't lose your disk in case of error. I would stripe them as one big RAID group, then break down that group into equal size virtual disks (RAID disks) then let VI client detect the new storage for each, you setup the first one, and use the remaining RAID Virtual Disks to be extents for the first one.

Then you are protected and you can still make this one large volume datastore.

[The-Kevster]

Thanks for your help. I've created a RAID 6 volume on the MSA and split it into 3 X 1500GB volumes which I've passed to ESX and used extents to create a single VMFS.