Troubleshooting creating virtual disks in VMFS or NFS datastores

Products

VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps to assist you in troubleshooting issues you may encounter when creating a virtual disk.

Symptoms:

Cannot create a virtual disk on a VMFS datastore
Creating a virtual disk fails with an error
Insufficient disk space on the VMFS or NFS datastore
You see insufficient disk space errors when there is enough disk space

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESX Server 2.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware ESX Server 2.5.x
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Installable
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware ESX Server 2.1.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware ESX Server 3.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded

Resolution

Validate that each troubleshooting step below is true for your environment. Each step provides instructions or a link to a document, in order to eliminate possible causes and take corrective action as necessary. The steps are ordered in the most appropriate sequence to isolate the issue and identify the proper resolution. Do not skip a troubleshooting step.

Verify that the datastore is not full. For more information, see Verifying sufficient free disk space for an ESX/ESXi virtual machine (1003755).
Verify that you have sufficient permissions to the VMFS datastore. If you are not logged in as the administrator, exit and log in as the administrator. If the administrator account can create the virtual disk, the permissions for the user need to be verified.
Verify that the block size of the VMFS datastore is sufficient to store the desired size of your virtual disk. For more information, see Block size limitations of a VMFS datastore (1003565).

Note: This commonly accounts for situations when creating a virtual disk larger than 256GB on VMFS datastores formatted with the default 1MB block size.
Confirm that there are no more than 32,000 files on the VMFS datastore. For more informaiton, see Investigating an out of resources error on a datastore (1003762) .
With ESXi 5.0 and VMFS5 check to see if the volume has been formatted with ATS-only capabilities. See ESXi 5.0 hosts fail to mount VMFS5 volumes that are formatted with ATS-only capabilities (2006858) for more information.

Note: If the problem persists after performing the verifications or steps provided in this article:

Gather the VMware Support Script Data. For more information, see Collecting Diagnostic Information in a VMware Virtual Infrastructure Environment (1003689).
File a support request with VMware Technical Support and note this KB Article ID (1003562) in the problem description. For more information, see How to Submit a Support Request.

Additional Information

With ESXi 5.0, VMFS-5 has been introduced. VMFS-5 adds several new features that will improve performance, reliability, and scalability. See vSphere 5 FAQ: VMFS-5 (2003813) for more information.Block size limitations of a VMFS datastore
Verifying sufficient free disk space for an ESX/ESXi virtual machine
Investigating an out of resources error on a datastore
Frequently Asked Questions on VMware vSphere 5.x for VMFS-5
ESXi hosts fail to mount VMFS5 volumes that are formatted with ATS-only capabilities