GOS will not able to boot from 4kn disks with BIOS firmware

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

GOS, including Windows, Linux and Unix, cannot boot from 4kn disks when using BIOS firmware.

Environment

vSphere 9.0 and later

Cause

BIOS was designed in an era when hard disk sectors were strictly 512 bytes. Since this sector size is baked into BIOS interfaces, 4kn disks are incompatible.

Resolution

To boot from 4kn disks, select EFI firmware during installation.