• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

VMWare ESXi and Storage Question

D

dawks

Diamond Member
I'm a bit of an ESXi and *nix newb, so this has me a little confused. I'm setting up a new server that has 4x1tb drives in RAID 5 for 3.65TB in storage. Installed ESXi to that RAID array, but vSphere is only reporting 1.6tb storage for the datastore. Whats going on?

http://twitpic.com/3vkfu7/full

How can I make the full storage available?
 
Thats just what your vmware install is using. All the other RAW storage is still there for you to use for virtual machines.
 
Another question, on another server I have running ESXi, when I reboot ESXi, the Guest OS's don't start automatically. In the configuration option, they are set to not start automatically, but I don't have the option to change that. You can see in the screen shot, the 'Edit' button is grey'ed out. I read on one forum post you I might need higher privileges, but I'm loggin in as root, and haven't configured other accounts. Any suggestions?
http://twitpic.com/3vkqat/full
 
dawks said:
Another question, on another server I have running ESXi, when I reboot ESXi, the Guest OS's don't start automatically. In the configuration option, they are set to not start automatically, but I don't have the option to change that. You can see in the screen shot, the 'Edit' button is grey'ed out. I read on one forum post you I might need higher privileges, but I'm loggin in as root, and haven't configured other accounts. Any suggestions?
http://twitpic.com/3vkqat/full
Click to expand...

Try clicking Move Up untill the VM is under the Automatic Startup category. The edit button should become available then.
 
It looks like you have a dos partition for some reason? you may just have to repartition/format that volume but i'm not sure...
 
ESX/i does not support greater than 2TB - 512 VMFS or RDM volumes. There is a rumor that much larger volumes will be supported in ESXi 5.
 
Chiefcrowe said:
It looks like you have a dos partition for some reason? you may just have to repartition/format that volume but i'm not sure...
Click to expand...

Yea, I'm not sure whats going on with that. I created the RAID array, then installed ESXi. All the partitions on there were setup by ESXi (and theres no option to change it during install that I can see).

yinan said:
ESX/i does not support greater than 2TB - 512 VMFS or RDM volumes. There is a rumor that much larger volumes will be supported in ESXi 5.
Click to expand...

So this is what the problem is..? Any way I could partition the drive so I could have multiple data stores at least? Or just roll with it as is, then hope for support for in 5?
 
tomt4535 said:
Try clicking Move Up untill the VM is under the Automatic Startup category. The edit button should become available then.
Click to expand...

Oh man, that was it, thanks. So silly! I didn't even notice they were categorized like that. i was just noticing the 'Start up' column said 'Disabled'.
 
5 will probably be out late this year.

To use all of the storage you will need a RAID controller that can do LUN carving to create volumes less than 2TB-512b.
 
You can use extents to glue together multiple <2TB volumes if you absolutely need a volume >2TB. It's usually not worth the trouble though and I'm not sure if this applies to local disks. From what I've heard, this limit will still be in ESX 5/VMFS 5.
 
GhettoFob said:
You can use extents to glue together multiple <2TB volumes if you absolutely need a volume >2TB. It's usually not worth the trouble though and I'm not sure if this applies to local disks. From what I've heard, this limit will still be in ESX 5/VMFS 5.
Click to expand...

It will not be the limit in ESX5. The limit will be something like 54TB. Odd number but it is what it is supposed to be.
 
Most people have made some good suggestions here, I dont have much else to add on that note, I just noticed something about the original post that was odd. RAID 5 four 1TB drives should add up to about 2.7 some odd TB, how did you get a 3.65TB volume? The only way i see that is with RAID 0. Maybe this is effecting some of the available storage?
 
When you install ESXi... you really want to install the Hypervisor to a small partition and partition and format the rest of the space yourself. Nothing makes your day more than to go and extend a vdisk and get a message that 512GB -(512k) is the max file size because the installer picked 1MB segment sizes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top