My 16TB datastore has a 2TB file size limit

[all2surreal]

Hi.  We just got a brand new Dell PowerEdge R630 server with ten 2TB drives in it that I've configured as a RAID5.  This is a server that I'll be using in our new DR site and will be a target replication site.  Anyhow, I've installed the latest version of ESXi on it and attached it to my new vCenter server and then naturally got the warning to create a datastore.  So, in going through the process to do that, I noticed at the end it said it would have a maximum file size limit of 2TB.  See attachment for my screenshot of this.  I'm not sure why this is and in my research I've read that 62TB is the maximum now.  Am I completely misunderstanding something?  My primary concern is that I need to be able to replicate my VMs in my production environment, running on an EMC SAN using NFS storage, to my DR site using this new server as the target datastore.  Some of my production VMs do have vmdk files over 2TB; which is a concern because of this.  Any advice would be great! Thanks, Adam

[MKguy]

What exactly is this "latest version of ESXi" you are referring to? On ESXi 5.5 and later, VMFS5 supports a maximum files size of 62TB

As per the VMware KB:

Support for virtual machine disks larger than 2 TB in VMware ESXi 5.5 (2058287) | VMware KB

Block size limitations of a VMFS datastore (1003565) | VMware KB

The limits that apply to VMFS-5 datastores are:

    The maximum virtual disk (VMDK) size is 2 TB minus 512 B for ESXi 5.0 and 5.1. In ESXi 5.5, the size is increased to 62TB.

If you're on 5.5 or 6.0, then I suspect this is merely a cosmetic display bug in the C# Client. Among other newer features, the deprecated C# client limits you to creating VMDKs up to 2TB. You must use the Web Client to create and manage VMDKs larger than 2TB, so this might just be an indication that has remained from earlier Client versions.

[all2surreal]

Looks like it is indeed a bug of the actual vSphere client software.  In the Web client it does show that the maximum file size as 62TB.  Thanks!

[narenotpp]

did you check your datastore properties in vSphere Web Client, see bellow screenshot

[all2surreal]

After checking my datastore settings in the Web client I now see that 62TB is the maximum file size.