Disk volume being seen as correct space, however can only provision a single datastore 1/8 the volume size

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

On a Dell R670 with  a PERC H975i Front disk controller when attempting to create a datastore only 1/8 of the total storage space is showing available for usage

Environment

ESX 9.0

Cause

There is an issue with the way in which the GUI presents the disk information. 

Resolution

Permanent fix is to be included in ESX 9.1

To workaround this issue manually create the datastore from the command line.

partedUtil setptbl "/vmfs/devices/disks/DeviceName" DiskLabel ["partNum startSector endSector type/guid attribute"]

Example:

​​​​​​​​​partedUtil setptbl /vmfs/devices/disks/DeviceName gpt "1 2048 7516192734 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 0"

 

You can create a datastore with the VMFS-5/VMFS-6 file system using the command:

vmkfstools -C vmfs6 -S <NewDatastore> /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6090123456xxx:1

Example:

vmkfstools -C vmfs6 -S  TestDatastore /vmfs/devices/disks/DeviceName:1

Additional Information

Manually creating a VMFS volume using vmkfstools -C

Using partedUtil command line disk partitioning utility on ESXi