I am having trouble adding storage to my VMWARE ESXi 5 host

I have a HP Proliant DL380 G5 server that I want to use as my ESXi 5 host server, for my home test network. Before installing ESXi, I configured the HP server with 2 RAID 10 mirrors (one with 2 73 GB drives and one with 2 300 GB drives) and one RAID 5 array of 3 146 GB drives) All showed up successfully in the HP bios and using HP smartstart. I can see all arrays and I have run all tests to make sure they are working. I then installed ESXi 5 and everything went smooth. I then took my laptop and pointed to the IP of the ESXi host and downloaded VSphere Client and prepared to begin building my network. I noticed under STORAGE that only the small RAID partition was showing up so I went to add more storage by selecting ADD STORAGE/Disk/LUN, I highlighted the Local VMware Disk that I knew was the 300 GB mirror and added it with VMFS-5 and it added sucessfully. I then repeated the procedure and selected my RAID 5 array and did the same thing, but this time I received the error "CALL "HostDataStoreSystem.QueryVmfsDatastoreCreateOptions "for object ha-datastoresystem" on ESXi "10.0.0.21" failed. I am kind of stuck now. I have not been able to add the extra storage to my host. Has anyone ever seen this before or have any suggestions?

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Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert / EE Fellow)VMware and Virtualization ConsultantCommented: 2012-01-07

Yes, I have seen this error, the RAID 5 array is not a used array from another OS, e.g. it does not currently have another partition present on it?

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Thor2923Author Commented: 2012-01-07

I think this server had SUSE on it before and we swapped out a couple drives with another server when I took this machine home...not sure what was on those drives last,could even be a mix of OSs, but shouldnt that wll be wiped out by now??

the three 146GB disks are they virgin unused disks out of the box, silver bags, or used?

the 3 146 are used, probably had SUSE on them before

No unless you perform a COMPLETE SMARTSTART ERASE the disks wil keep the partition OS. If you try to add disks, arrays with existing partitions, ESXi can complain trying to add a VMFS partition.

BOOT server with Gparted Live CDROM or Parted Magic, and remove ALL partitions.

well I see the RAID 5 partition showing up under STORAGE adapters....maybe I should just boot off the HP SMARTSTARD CD and delete and rebuild the RAID config?

ok I will look into your GPARTED live

Sometimes during the add wizard, it will list existing partitions on array, but boot from Gpart, Parted Magic and check.

Check with GParted Live CDROM if partition exists.

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Thor2923Author Commented: 2012-01-08

thanks, you came thru again!!! I downloaded the gparted iso you talked about, but could not find a DVD to burn it on. I thought a bit then just want back into the HP system bios and deleted and rebuilt the RAID 5 array that would not load. IT IS WORKING NOW. I now have 600 GB worth of space to build my home network, so I am sure I will be back with more questions..bye for now

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert / EE Fellow)VMware and Virtualization ConsultantCommented: 2012-01-08

No Problems. Happy VMware Year.

I do not know why VMware ESXi has no partition utilties to remove foreign partitions, we have this issue ALL the time, when re-using old non-VMware LUNs!

I am having trouble adding storage to my VMWARE ESXi 5 host

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