ESXi hosts sees individual local disks instead of RAID volume

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• ESXi host detects the individual physical hard disks instead of the RAID volume.
  
  
• No hardware errors reported by they physical server on the hardware console.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

Issue reported as the disks are configured as pass-through at the hardware level, instead of Logical volume combining the physical disks using RAID.

• In a pass-through configuration, the RAID controller acts as a simple bridge. It "passes" the physical disk directly to the OS without any abstraction.
• A Logical Volume is a "virtual" disk created by the hardware RAID controller. The controller takes multiple physical disks and stitches them together into one or more units.

To validate RAID configuration, use the server vendor's RAID management tools (e.g., Dell iDRAC, HPE iLO, Lenovo XCC). These tools provide details on RAID levels, disk health, and logical drive status.

Resolution

Engage the hardware vendor to create the Logical Volume combining the disks and RAID as per the requirement.

Note:
Removing the disk from pass-through and creating the Logical volume will format all data in the disks.