What's the correct vDisk spec for Unraid in vSphere?

[vitaprimo]

  

I found my lost(sort of) Unraid flash drive and put it back to work right away as an app server—that was the idea. The problem is that it won't detect any of the virtual disks I'm adding to it. This is that same flash drive that I've had for years now that has already been put to work in this fashion in the very same hypervisor.

 

Linux has had pretty good support for VMware's paravirtual SCSI controller/driver for a while, out of the box. I'm positive it supports it since it recognizes it (no mention that I've used it before) but it's the virtual disk itself that's appears to be unrecognized, sort of.

 

PCI Devices and IOMMU Groups

IOMMU group 0:				[8086:7190] 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host bridge (rev 01)
IOMMU group 1:				[8086:7191] 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP bridge (rev 

--{ … }----------------------------------------------------------------------- - -  -   -    -
IOMMU group 5:				[15ad:07a0] 00:15.0 PCI bridge: VMware PCI Express Root Port (rev 01)
				[15ad:07a0] 00:15.1 PCI bridge: VMware PCI Express Root Port (rev 01)
				[15ad:07a0] 00:15.2 PCI bridge: VMware PCI Express Root Port (rev 01)
				[15ad:07a0] 00:15.3 PCI bridge: VMware PCI Express Root Port (rev 01)
				[15ad:07a0] 00:15.4 PCI bridge: VMware PCI Express Root Port (rev 01)
				[15ad:07a0] 00:15.5 PCI bridge: VMware PCI Express Root Port (rev 01)
				[15ad:07a0] 00:15.6 PCI bridge: VMware PCI Express Root Port (rev 01)
				[15ad:07a0] 00:15.7 PCI bridge: VMware PCI Express Root Port (rev 01)
			 	[15ad:07c0] 03:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: VMware PVSCSI SCSI Controller (rev 02)
				[2:0:0:0]    disk    VMware   Virtual disk     2.0   /dev/sdb   42.9GB
--{ … }----------------------------------------------------------------------- - -  -   -    -
[15ad:07a0] 00:18.7 PCI bridge: VMware PCI Express Root Port (rev 01)
				


CPU Thread Pairings

Single:	cpu 0
--{ … }----------------------------------------------------------------------- - -  -   -    -
Single:	cpu 11


USB Devices

Bus 001 Device 001 Port 1-0	  ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002 Port 1-1	  ID 0781:5583 SanDisk Corp. Ultra Fit
Bus 002 Device 001 Port 2-0	  ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002 Port 2-1	  ID 0e0f:0003 VMware, Inc. Virtual Mouse
Bus 002 Device 003 Port 2-2	  ID 0e0f:0002 VMware, Inc. Virtual USB Hub


SCSI Devices

[0:0:0:0]	disk    SanDisk  Ultra Fit        1.00  /dev/sda   15.3GB
[2:0:0:0]	disk    VMware   Virtual disk     2.0   /dev/sdb   42.9GB

 

Not on the GUI anyway. That said, the latest FreeBSD is very picky is I use the paravirtual driver and on the more mainstream side, Ubuntu VM need some uniqueness property manually specified on their vDisks and whatever the Controller. So I started going down the list of SCSI controllers: tried 3 out of 4, none worked. I switched the vDisk to IDE and it finally appeared, except that it can't be used in this way. It fails to format, it's seems as if it were read only.

 

Maybe if I use something built-in like fdisk, gpart, gparted, etc to initialize the disk then try again from the GUI?  I already tried creating a GPT partition (and a new partition table and just the table, removed the partition) with fdisk but it still was not recognized. Lastly, I tried looking for the Open VM Tools package/drivers for the links here the forum are dead. I don't believe there's a pkg manger in Unraid, is there?

 

It's been a while since I set up Unraid, 560 days according to the parity information, I need a little refresher, I think. I do remember it was pretty straightforward though.

 

I guess that's it. Thanks.

 

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Software:

Unraid v6.10.3

Community Applications v2023.05.21

Unassigned Devices v2023.05.28a

Unassigned Devices Plus v2023.04.15

vSphere 7 (though this host is still on ESXi 6.7u2)

— VM version 15, VMware Tools is not reported to the hypervisor

Edited May 29, 2023 by vitaprimo