Unable to add an Intel 530 SSD as an ESXi 6.0 Datastore

[asood99]

Hello. Has anyone else been able to add an Intel (530) SSD as a datastore on ESXi 6.0?

I've tried multiple times unsuccessfully. It starts the process and shows it in the recent tasks as "Create VMFS datastore", but after that it just keeps running and never completes.

I've added 3 other non-SSD (Hitachi and 2 Western Digital) drives without any problem.

I've "cleaned" the SSD by attaching it to a Win7 system and using diskpart to erase any other partitions:

diskpart^

select disk x^

clean^

exit^

and then marked it as active with a GPT format.

I tried reinstalling a clean copy of ESXi and then adding it, but got the same results.

Does anyone have any idea what I might be doing wrong?

Or is the problem related to the (type of) SSD?

Thanks in advance,

A Sood

--

PS. The "Create VMFS datastore" task never ends. I eventually just reboot the system to end it.

[asood99]

I finally got it to work by booting with a bootable linux usb (XUbuntu) and then using gParted to delete all partitions on the disk.

I noted a difference in the vSphere client reporting the disk as "blank" where as the other methods didn't.

Hopefully, this post will help someone else and save them some time : )

[RichardBush]

I have had something similar,

If i added the whole SSD disk to a datastore in one go it would cause a hang, the job wouldnt complete and bad things started happening to the host (mine are test so not a huge deal).

So i created the DS as 100GB, and this worked, extended it to 200GB worked etc etc all the way up to the full size of the disk.

What disk controller are you using ?

Rich

[asood99]

Hello Rich. I got it to work.

I mounted the drive (all in a bootable Linux), with gParted created a gpt partition table, and left the rest of the drive empty. If there were any partitions, deleted them.

Then I followed the regular steps to add as a DS in ESXi. It was added, but it took a long time. Much longer than expected. It was ~30 minutes for a 120G drive during which time the vSphere client was unresponsive.

The KEY seems to be: It takes MUCH longer to add SSDs as a data store.

[rcstevensonaz]

I noticed the exact same thing this weekend building a new ESXi 6.0 server with an Intel 530 SSD 256GB and an Intel 730 SSD 480GB.

Building the VMFS took about half an hour for the 256GB 530.  I went to bed and have no idea how many hours the 480GB 730 took.  These are on SATA 0 and SATA 1 of a SuperMicro X9SCM (C204) motherboard.

And, as was noted earlier, the ESXi server itself was essentially unresponsive during this process.  vSphere client was not updating; performance measurements not updating; access through the console was very unresponsive.  I did not have any VMs running; so I don't know if they would have also been effected during this time.   First time, I thought the machine was hung and rebooted; then tried again and just left the machine running with the VMFS formating and eventually it completed.

[kewlethan]

Can someone from VMware please comment on this? I'm experiencing the same problem with a Dell R220 and Intel DC S3500.

Call "HostDatastoreSystem.CreateVmfsDatastore" for object "ha-datastoresystem" on ESXi "x.x.x.x" failed.

[JoeHuangpop]

Hi all

I have same problem when I using SSD (Samsung 960G, Intel 800G) to add storage procedure are both hangs

.

Does anyone have any idea or related KB what I might be doing wrong?

My environmnt is ESXi 6 "2494585"

Thanks.

/Joe

[AveryFreeman]

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to mention that I am having issues that seem similar even now, almost three years later.  I am trying to use an Intel DC S3500 800GB drive with ESXi and it keeps complaining of an IO error.  The drive will format (have only tried one partition, VMFS 6) and appear to be working correctly until I try and create a VM, at which point the drive with either hang during the creation process, or the first time I try to boot the VM. 

I've also taken the drive out and "clean"-ed with diskpart in a Windows 10 system and the behavior continues, but I haven't tried using Linux and gParted yet.  I think I will try that since ESXi is a lot closer to Linux than it is Windows. 

Would like to know why this is still happening ... would be nice to be able to initialize a new drive without having to go through this process, but if it works, I'll be happy

[kewlethan]

It sounds like you may be experiencing a different problem. I couldn't even create a datastore on the SSD. I think the fix for me was to first format using VMFS3. After that I was able to format using VMFS5 and all was good. It sounds like you may have an issue with your SSD or maybe the SATA bus or cable. If you have a different SATA cable try that. Also do thin provisioned disk on SSD if you're not already.