ESXi Add Storage hangs – loading…

This issue describes the following situation, and an easy solution for it:

I bought a brand-new server from Dell, running in R5 configuration (PERC H710) where two partitions were installed by default. The bare-metal ESXi 5.1 hypervisor is also installed by default on an embedded SD module. Upon adding a datastore in the vSphere client, ESXi hangs for one of the partitions (with animated  “Loading…” text), forcing me to restart ESXi.

If this sounds like your issue, read further!

What you need to know is that ESXi doesn’t like one of the default partitions that Dell set up for you and you will need to re-partition some how. There are a couple ways to do this, but I’m going to tell you the easiest one.

The general idea is that you will need to log into ESXi via SSH and use the provided utility ‘partedUtil’ to delete the default partition, so that you can continue to create a new one with your vSphere client. Now, you can go so far as to create the partition while you are in the shell environment as well.. but you likely don’t want to do that because it’s just easier in vSphere, right?

First, enable SSH:

1.) Log into vSphere, and click on your server on the left panel, then click on the ‘configuration’ tab.

2.) Under the “Software” header, select “Security Profile”.

3.) In the content window, on the right of “Services”, select “properties”.

4.) enable both “ESXi Shell” and “SSH” by selecting and clicking on the “Options” button individually.

Now you can log into ESXi manually using your root password that you set up.

*NOTE*, it’s a good idea to turn those services off after you are done.

Next, Delete the stubborn partition!:

1.) Log into ESXi via a shell (If you are not on a linux machine, you can install the free shell app for windows called putty).

2.) Use this Knowledge Base article to list your disks, get partition table information, then delete the troublesome partition:

ESXi partedUtil Knowledge Base

For a summary, here are the abridged steps for ESXi 5.1 (but seriously, use the link above):

a.) List your disks:

ls /vmfs/devices/disks/

b.) Print existing partition table

partedUtil getptbl "/vmfs/devices/disks/DeviceName"

c.) Delete stubborn partition

partedUtil delete "/vmfs/devices/disks/DeviceName" PartitionNumber

Once those steps are done, you should be able to go back to vSphere and complete adding a datastore, and this time, vSphere should not hang while trying to access the partition.

Enjoy!, despite technology.

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