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I found an error with vmware esxi. Message from windows client is: Call “HostStorageSystem.ComputeDiskPartitionInfo” for object “storageSystem” on ESXi “x.x.x.x” failed.

I have the issue because the disk that I was using had existing partitions (a Linux swap partition and a Linux MD5 RAID partition).  I had to manually delete the partitions logged in as root to my ESXi box, even though ESXi said it would do that for me.

Useful commands:

# esxcfg-scsidevs -l

this lists the disk devices, the device file will be /dev/disks/<NAME>

output looks like:

t10.ATA_____ST3320620AS_________________________________________6QF1PZXB

   Device Type: Direct-Access

   Size: 305245 MB

   Display Name: Local ATA Disk (t10.ATA_ST3320620AS_6QF1PZXB)

   Multipath Plugin: NMP

   Console Device: /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____ST3320620AS_________________________________________6QF1PZXB

   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____ST3320620AS_________________________________________6QF1PZXB

   Vendor: ATA       Model: ST3320620AS       Revis: 3.AA

   SCSI Level: 5  Is Pseudo: false Status: on

   Is RDM Capable: false Is Removable: false

   Is Local: true  Is SSD: false

   Other Names:

      vml.010000000020202020202020202020202036514631505a5842535433333230

   VAAI Status: unknown

 

Easy solution:

Now can recreate partition table for that disk with a blank one:

for MSDOS run:

 ~ # partedUtil setptbl /dev/disks/naa.600508b1001c95a3d3a1f9455babd2d0 msdos

msdos

0 0 0 0

for HDD larger than 2TB use GPT:

~ # partedUtil setptbl /dev/disks/naa.600508b1001cfb4c4b4ed4e1eee52e25 gpt

gpt

0 0 0 0

Now you have a fresh drive. Try to add again in datastore.

 

Alternative solution:

# partedUtil get /dev/disks/t10.ATA_...

this shows the partitions on the device

output looks like:

38913 255 63 625142448

1 63 514079 130 128

2 514080 625137344 253 0

this disk has 2 partitions, numbers 1 and 2

# partedUtil delete /dev/disks/t10.ATA_... 2

deletes partition 2

# partedUtil delete /dev/disks/t10.ATA_... 1

deletes partition 1