{"id":190,"date":"2011-10-18T08:26:20","date_gmt":"2011-10-18T07:26:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.campodoro.org\/?p=190"},"modified":"2011-10-18T08:36:56","modified_gmt":"2011-10-18T07:36:56","slug":"adding-a-non-vmfs-drive-to-your-esxi-server-and-use-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.campodoro.org\/?p=190","title":{"rendered":"Adding a non-VMFS drive to your ESX(i) server and use it!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had some spare Windows drives lying around and wanted to put them in my HP MicroServer running ESXi 4.1.<\/p>\n

After installing the SATA drive, and rebooting, I tried to simply add the drive in the vSphere console. No love from VMWare \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I got the message, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Error while adding drive – disk not available.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Hmmm. I was sure the drive was working.<\/p>\n

Turns out that in ESXi, once a disk has been written to, in any format, it won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t initialize.
\nHere\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what it took to add the drive in:<\/p>\n

Low-level formatted the drive (the name of the drive might be shorter or longer):
\n~ # dd if=\/dev\/zero of=\/vmfs\/devices\/disks\/t10.ATA_ST3500413AS_Z2A3TKQ6 bs=512 conv=notrunc<\/code><\/p>\n

Try adding the disk to your datastore now<\/strong>; I canceled this command after waiting 5 minutes and noticed that ESXi now saw the disk as a ‘blank disk’. Adding it to my datastore now worked! If not, continue…<\/p>\n

Recreate the partition table:
\n~ # fdisk \/vmfs\/devices\/disks\/t10.ATA_ST3500413AS_Z2A3TKQ6<\/code><\/p>\n

Then \u00e2\u20ac\u02dco<\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to Create a new empty DOS partition table
\nThen \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcn<\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to add a new partition. I used Primary as the type, and 1 as the partition number.
\nThen \u00e2\u20ac\u02dct<\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to change the type. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfb\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is the code for VMFS 3.0
\nThen \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcw<\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to write everything to the drive<\/p>\n

Finally, use the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcvmkfstools\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 program to create the volume. I added it as a new datastore using the following command:
\n~ # vmkfstools -C vmfs3 -S Datastore2 \/vmfs\/devices\/disks\/t10.ATA_ST3500413AS_Z2A3TKQ6<\/code><\/p>\n

As always, YMMV.<\/p>\n

\"Post<\/a> Tweet<\/a> \"Post<\/a> Post to Delicious<\/a> \"Post<\/a> Post to Facebook<\/a><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had some spare Windows drives lying around and wanted to put them in my HP MicroServer running ESXi 4.1. After installing the SATA drive, and rebooting, I tried to simply add the drive in the vSphere console. No love … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux","category-menu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.campodoro.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.campodoro.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.campodoro.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.campodoro.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.campodoro.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.campodoro.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195,"href":"https:\/\/blog.campodoro.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions\/195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.campodoro.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.campodoro.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.campodoro.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}