EXSi 4.1 storage on a MSA60

[xpa]

Hi,

I have a MSA60 with 12 disks of 1TB. The only way i can see something on esxi 4.1 storage is creating 4 arrays of 3 disks and create logical volumes of 2TB in raid 5. The problem is i just can see 1 volume and not the 4. Other way is security and space is left... 12TB become 8TB...if it works!

How can i use the MSA60 storage with esxi to use the most space and take advantage of raid?

Thanks in advance

[Uwe Zessin]

VMware ESX cannot deal with disks larger then 2^32 blocks (=2TB) for several reasons...

Many SmartArray controllers allow you to create a large disk drive array and then put multiple logical disks in it. That gives you more space, because the redundancy information is needed for one array only.

[xpa]

If i create a 12 disk array and create logical volumes of 2TB it seems obvious it should work, but does not.

I just see a non-space datastore


Should I ask, how to use MSA60 on exsi?

[Uwe Zessin]

I am not fully sure what you mean by "non-space datastore". When you use "Add Storage" - you see no space in the "Capacity" column for the 'Disk/LUN'?

Can you provide a screenshot?
(Small .JPG, please - no .DOC or .RTF -- thanks)

The disk must have 4,294,967,295 or less blocks - it cannot be 'exactly' 2TB.

[xpa]

Now a i created a 12 disk array.

After created 4 1.9TB logical volume raid5.

Now i just can add 1 datastore of 1.9TB, after add it, DISK/LUN becomes empty.

In controller storage i see that my p411 has 1 volume (just one of 1.9TB) plus a tape unit

My host is a DL380G6


After this, something is better, now i just can see 1 volume, because maybe of 2TB volume in previous condition, i could only see "non-space datastore" as you mentioned.


Should i create volumes smallers? I'll try 1TB just for test, or have you any good idea?

[xpa]

I just created a 12 disk array, and 10 logical drives of 1TB each.

The result is the same, i have only 1 datastore of 1TB and don't have more disk/lun available.

The storage adapter continue show the tape unit and 1 disk of 1TB.

So?


I'd like to use the msa60 and i have installed all new firmware.

ideas please...

[xpa]

picture 1

datastore view

[xpa]

picture 2

extend device

[xpa]

picture 3

storage adapters

[Kyle Bedell]

Thanks for this thread. I didnt realize the 2 TB limit. I too have an HP MSA60 but had no problems creating two 1.37 TB logical drives. They appeared as LUNs 0 and 1.

Both are seen and now used by VMWare.