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VMWare Physical Disk >2tb problem

  • 18-08-2014 11:09am
    #1
    STG.Otaku
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,214 ✭✭✭


    Hi alll. I am presently building a home VM setup. Quick bit of background on it, the kit comprises:

    1 x HP Proliant Microserver w/ 16gb RAM
    1 x VMWare HP Specific ESXi v5.1 Update 2
    1 x 250gb HDD to which ESXI and the Datastore are located
    1 x 3TB WD RED HDD which contains important data. (EXT4)

    I am running VMWare Workstation and currently have the following set up:

    1 x Ubuntu x64 14.04 Server

    Roles installed on the server included SSH and Samba. I have also enabled SSH on ESXi for remote admin.

    OK, so the issue I have is that prior to spending this past weekend putting all of this together, the 250gb used to be a Ubuntu 12.x x64bit server primarily used for Plex. I then mounted the 3tb drive as dev/sdb1 and created a few Samba shares (and some under my laptop client OS, Windows 7, to store my data).

    If I put a Linux live distro to USB and boot the HP box, I can read the 3tb drive fine and my data is all there. Which is good! However, what I have decided to do, is virtualise the Ubuntu server. For some reason, despite wasting an entire Saturday trying, I simply could not perform P2V on the Ubuntu server. Figuring that it was primarily (or rather, solely) configured for Plex, I decided to overwrite the 250gb with ESXi and use that as the ESXi host and data store for the couple of VM disks I'd be setting up. Maybe a couple of Linux clients and a Windows 8 client, something like that. Plus the Ubuntu Plex server.

    So, I recreated the Ubuntu server. I have Plex and Webmin installed and configured. Next I wanted to introduce my 3tb drive to the datastore and allow the Ubuntu server, and any future VM's I create to access the data held on it.

    I didn't realise there was such a problem adding physical disks to the datastore that are over 2tb. So I had to SSH to the ESXi and manually add the HDD as a raw disk (??) so it would show up in the datastore? I got that far, and it now shows up, which is great. However, I believe the next step is to add the disk to the settings within a VM. I tried doing that, but it tells me it detects it as a physical disk (which again, I assume is a good thing), but nowhere do I see an option to allow me to add the disk as a physical one.

    So at this point I've hit a bump and am not sure how to proceed. Is it because I am using VMWare Workstation? Should I be using VSphere?

    Though it's crucial I don't lose my data on the 3tb drive. The main reason is a bunch of SD dumps are on it from my DSLR. So all the RAW files etc are there as well as other data. My intention is to add another 3tb drive in the near future and mirror it so I have a backup should either drive fail.

    Any helpful hints and tips would be great. Go easy on me though as I am only a beginner!


Comments

  • #2
    STEINBERG
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 248 ✭✭STEINBERG


    Have a read of this thread https://communities.vmware.com/thread/419042

    It might answer some of your questions,, im new to this myself but VMware are a little vague on this,,,note post 3 from the above thread

    "a single HDD can still only be 2TB minus 512bytes, if carved off a VMFS LUN. If you use a RDM in physical compatibility mode, you can go to 64TB"


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