vSphere Upgrade & Install

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  • 1.  New datastore Greyed out

    Posted Dec 18, 2020 04:12 PM

     


    Trying to build a home Lab. Installed ESXi 7 on a USB connected to Dell latitude 5501.
    Connected a 1TB SSD ( WD My Passport) locally. Trying to use this as a disk space for creating/storing VMs.

    However "New datastore", it is greyed out.

    Please let me know how to use the hard drive.

     

    Shanmukh2_0-1608305808400.png

    Shanmukh2_1-1608307378692.png

     

     

     



  • 2.  RE: New datastore Greyed out

    Posted Dec 18, 2020 05:26 PM

    According to the screenshots the drive already contains a partition which occupies the full disk space.
    You will have to destroy/delete the existing partition in order to create a new one (a datastore).

    André



  • 3.  RE: New datastore Greyed out
    Best Answer

    Posted Dec 20, 2020 01:14 PM

    Thank you.

    found the following.

    https://burnhamforensics.com/2019/01/31/manually-attach-usb-device-as-a-vmfs-datastore-in-esxi/

    Since the disk was already partitioned, issued the following command

    vmkfstools -C vmfs6 -S External-Storage /dev/disks/<deviceID>:1

     This formatted the partition to vmfs6 and was able to create a datastore named External-Storage.