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I have installed ESXi server 4.1 which has "2398 GB" disk space, but when I'm running the command df -h in the ESXi server terminal, it is showing :vmfs3 180.5GB"

Could you please let me know how to resolve this issue.

Here is the solution for the above issue.

There seems to be a problem with the new version of VMware's ESXi, 4.1. Due to ESXi's automatic installation and disk partitioning, no advanced parameters can be given, e.g. to manually create vmfs3 partitions. Usually that works fine, the installation creates the system partitions (HyperVisor) and uses the rest of the disk for a local vmfs3 datastore.

The situation: I installed ESXi 4.1 on a Dell PE 2900 with 8 harddisks on a Raid-5, a total of 2.86 TB of diskspace. The integrated Raid Controller (PERC 5/i) shows the correct sum of diskspace and the installation of ESXi detects the logical harddisk correctly with a diskspace of 2.86 TB.

The problem: Once ESXi 4.1 was installed, a local VMFS datastore was created - with a size of 744 GB (on another server model it showed 877GB, see screenshot below). Instead of using the whole diskspace. The maximum filesystem limit of VMFS3 is 2TB per LUN and ESXi detects the local disk/partition as a LUN so it should have created a 2TB vmfs datastore. But no.

The following instructions are advanced system commands. Do not do them on a production machine, only on a newly installed ESXi 4.1 machine which doesn't host any virtual machines yet.

First we have to find the correct disk, for which ESXi has given a special name. Use the following commands to find your local disk. Note that I have cut the full output, I only show the local disk information (the full output would also contain CD drive, attached iSCSI or SAN disks, etc.). To run the following commands, you need to enable SSH. You can do this on the ESXi console in Troubleshooting.

This shows the disk name (naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00d) and the LUN name (vmhba1:C2:T0:L0):

# esxcfg-mpath -b
naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00d : Local DELL Disk (naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00d)
   vmhba1:C2:T0:L0 LUN:0 state:active Local HBA vmhba1 channel 2 target 0

With the following command we see even more information and what we need is also here: The device path which we will use as the local disk identifier in the next commands:

# esxcfg-scsidevs -l
naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00d
   Device Type: Direct-Access    Size: 3000704 MB    Display Name: Local DELL Disk (naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00d)    Multipath Plugin: NMP    Console Device: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00d    Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00d    Vendor: DELL Model: PERC 5/i Revis: 1.03    SCSI Level: 5 Is Pseudo: false Status: on    Is RDM Capable: false Is Removable: false    Is Local: true    Other Names:      vml.02000000006001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00d504552432035    VAAI Status: unknown

Disk /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00d: 3146.4 GB, 3146466197504 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 3000704 cylinders, total 6145441792 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Check your current partition table and note down the number of partition which is used for VMFS (by default it should be p3):

# fdisk -l
Device     Boot     Start     End     Blocks     Id     System
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp1     5 900 917504 5     Extended
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp2     901 4995 4193280 6     FAT16
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp3     4996 761728 774894592 fb  VMFS
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp4  * 1 4 4080 4     FAT16 <32M
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp5     5 254 255984 6     FAT16
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp6     255 504 255984 6     FAT16
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp7     505 614 112624 fc     VMKcore
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp8     615 900 292848 6     FAT16

The next step is to delete the automatically created vmfs3 partition using the fdisk command:

fdisk -u /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00d
Command (m for help): d
Partition number (1-8): 3
Command (m for help): w

Now we create a new partition and change its type to VMFS. When fdisk asks for the last sector (=size) of the new partition, we enter +2097152M (which is 2TB):

fdisk -u /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00d
Command (m for help): n
Command action
   l logical (5 or over)
   p primary partition (1-4)
p
Selected partition 3
First sector (10229760-1850474495, default 10229760): 10229760
Last sector or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (10229760-4294967294, default 4294967294): +2097152M

Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-8): 3
Hex code (type L to list codes): fb
Changed system type of partition 3 to fb (VMFS)

Command (m for help): w

Now we check again the partition table to verify the changes:

# fdisk -l
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp1     5 900 917504 5 Extended
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp2     901 4995 4193280 6 FAT16
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp3     4996 2004996 2047999936+ fb VMFS
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp4 *   1 4 4080 4 FAT16 <32M
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp5     5 254 255984 6 FAT16
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp6     255 504 255984 6 FAT16
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp7     505 614 112624 fc VMKcore
/dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00dp8     615 900 292848 6 FAT16

Now the new partition has to be formatted to a VMFS3. This can be done with the following command where -b is standing for the filesystem blocksize. Here I use 8M which is currently the biggest blocksize and made for big vmdk files. Note that the partition number has to be given, therefore the :3 at the end:

# vmkfstools -C vmfs3 -b 8M -S datastore1 /dev/disks/naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00d:3
Checking if remote hosts are using this device as a valid file system. This may take a few seconds...
Creating vmfs3 file system on "naa.6001e4f01c94d50013d852397c7ef00d:3" with blockSize 8388608 and volume label "datastore1".
Successfully created new volume: 4c45bc40-6aa5a458-e509-001e4f2a6fac

Congratulations, the new VMFS datastore with a size of 2TB has been created on your ESXi 4.1 machine.

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  • Why did you do this the hard way?
    – ewwhite
    Apr 29, 2013 at 15:23

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
6

The ESXi terminal doesn't represent the datastore's available space. It's a small Busybox-like installation used to bootstrap the VMware hypervisor kernel.

Are you using the vSphere client? Please use that and create/use the necessary datastores to contain your VM data. You'll see you real available space in the Configuration->Storage menu.

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  • Thanks for the reply, Actually I have connected the ESXi server through terminal(Ubuntu) and I have tried with fdisk -l command it shows Disk /dev/disks/naa.6848f690ec88e50018fc32ab08f6476e: 2398.2 GB, 2398202363904 bytes But When I tried df -h it is showing : "vmfs3 180.5GB" Yes I'm running VSphere client and tried with above settings but it is showing only 180.5 GB available disk space. Colud you pls let me how to resolve this problem
    – Prabhakar
    Apr 29, 2013 at 13:52
  • 5
    This is NOT A PROBLEM. ESXi is NOT Linux. Don't treat it like Linux. You have to create a datastore from within the vSphere client to use the space you want.
    – ewwhite
    Apr 29, 2013 at 14:12
  • Yes, But is showing the available disk space as 180.5 GB not the whole sever disk space i.e 2398 GB. Server configuration is 2398 GB Hard disk, but it is showing 180.5 GB available.
    – Prabhakar
    Apr 29, 2013 at 14:18

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