Unable to install ESX/ESXi on local storage as the disk is grayed out

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Unable to install ESX/ESXi on local storage.
• Disk is grayed out (unavailable) in the installer.
• Local storage has more than 2TB.
• Unable to install onto a volume larger than 2TB.
• You receive this error when trying to proceed with the installation without a local disk selected:
  
  Storage Selection Error - You must select a place to install ESX

Environment

VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Installable
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware ESX 4.1.x

Resolution

ESX/ESXi does not support LUNs over 2TB in size. This is due to a limitation of the SCSI-2 protocol, and is not specific to VMware.

To workaround the issue, you can configure a RAID to present multiple local volumes that are less than 2TB in size. To be precise, the volumes created must be 2TB minus 512 Bytes to be at the supported maximum.

For more information about this limitation, see ESX/ESXi 3.x/4.x hosts do not support 2-terabyte LUNs (3371739).

Additional Information

ESX/ESXi 3.x/4.x hosts do not support 2-terabyte LUNs