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I am trying to add a 4TB HDD to my ESXi server, but I can't find out how. I've tried following a few tutorials on the internet, which say to go to the configuration tab, storage, rescan the datastores and add the HDD from there, but mine won't show up. enter image description here

I'm pretty sure that my HDD is working properly and should be working, because it shows up in the health status: enter image description here

Maybe I've missed a step or five, I just can't figure out how to add it. I've got a HP Proliant Microserver Gen 8 if it matters.

HBruijn
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Ultimabuster
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1 Answers1

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According to the screenshot below, you have an "Unconfigured Disk"...

This means that the drive needs to be configured on your HP Smart Array B120i RAID controller before it can be used by an operating system or VMware ESXi.

You can perform this from the ESXi command line using the hpssacli command located in /opt/hp/hpssacli/bin/hpssacli on your server...

or

You can accomplish this by pressing F8 during the Smart Array RAIDC controller initialization in the BIOS when the server is booting.

From there, you'll need to create a "logical drive" on the new disk you've inserted. From there, the storage will be visible to VMware ESXi.

ewwhite
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  • Ah, I thought that it would do this while adding it as a datastore or something. Thanks! I've got one more question though. Is there any benefit for the drive in bay 1? Like faster access times or something than bays 2 3 and 4? I'm just wondering if it's worth the effort to migrate my VMs to my new HDD and set it up in bay 1, or just leave it in bay 2. – Ultimabuster Dec 01 '14 at 08:14
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    @Ultimabuster Ideally, you'd be using the disks in a RAID configuration and not relying on single disks. I can't recall what the drive bay differences are on that model. I think two of the disk bays are different from the other two, though. – ewwhite Dec 01 '14 at 08:19
  • Ah, if it differs model by model I'll just leave it as is. I don't have 2 identical drives so I don't want to be trying RAID out. This isn't for anything important, just for personal use so I'm not too worried about data loss. Thanks for your help though! – Ultimabuster Dec 01 '14 at 08:28