Hi all,
I'm running ESXi6 update 02 on a 250GB SSD as main data store.
On the side I created a second datastore of 120 GB to add in its entirety as a secondary HDD to a VM.
Here is my basic setup:
VM1: 100 GB
VM2: 60 GB
VM3: 25 GB
VM4: 25 GB
26GB ish free. Disks are fully provisioned, eager zeroing.
All VM's have run successfully for extended periods of time.
What happened twice now is the following, in two different scenarios:
When editing a VM (like changing some memory or boot setting) I get the following error:
"The disk capacity specified is greater than the amount available in the datastore". This happens both in the web UI and in the vSphere client.
Looking at the HDD page in the VM properties it shows the HDD size I originally picked, 100GB for VM1 and 60GB for VM2, but below the box where you enter their size it says "Max 26ish GB" - the amount of free space in the datastore.
So for whatever reason ESXi6 isn't considering that these disks are existing ones, and the "free space" check should not be performed, it should just realize these are previously created HDDs and boot.
This is a hard stop and you cannot make any other configuration changes while that message happens.
I've gotten past it by flipping configuration pages and swapping between vSphere and UI a few times and the machines booted again, but I fully expect to be hit with it again next time I have to take the Vm's down.
The other VM's with 25GB HDD's boot just fine because the free space on the datastore is slightly bigger than the 25GB of their disks so the check is passed.
I got the same error when I added datastore 2 to a VM as dedicated disk (one of the VM's with 25GB from datastore 1 as HDD1). I simply made Datastore 2 on the second HDD, allocated it fully to Datastore 2 and then allocated the maximum, or close to the maximum, of the available space to a HDD2 on one of the VM's. The exact same error would happen - it would check free space on datastore 2 and say that the 120GB or so was way bigger than the free space on the datastore, due to the same symptom as above (it checking against free space erroneously).
Has anyone experienced this before?
Many thanks
Ruben