I’ll hop straight to the point. I have ESXi 6.5 U3 installed to a HDD on my server, because I don’t have enough thumb drives to spare for the server to have a dedicated one, and my budget is pretty tight at the moment. I used most of it to make sure I’d have a functioning server and spare parts, in case anything went up during initial setup. I want to use the remaining free space on said drive for a datastore (which will hold ISO’s and other important materials), and an currently trying to create it via SSH. Here are the materials I have read through thus far:

• VMware Knowledge Base – Identifying disks in ESX/ESXi
• VMware Knowledge Base – Using the partedUtil command
• VMware Knowledge Base – Manually creating a VMFS volumes with vmkfstools
• https://serverfault.com/questions/959224/i-cant-create-a-datastore-in-esxi-6-7-u1
• https://darkglade.com/2019/07/05/building-a-datastore-on-your-esxi-boot-usb/

Here is what I’ve tried in SSH so far:

clear

esxcli storage core path list

ls /dev/disks/

*The first command lists device/LUN paths.*
*The second lists devices and partitions.*
*I must match results from ^^^^ to find the drive with partitions 1/5/6/7/8 defined.*
*In my case, it's naa.600508b1001c5dd0b075505fceb1e350 - time to dump a parition table...*

partedUtil getptbl /dev/disks/naa.600508b1001c5dd0b075505fceb1e350

*In the output, the second line is misc data about the disk in question.*
*I need two numbers:*
*the last number of the 2nd line, which is the last sector of the disk*
*the 3rd column of the last line, which is 1 minus the start sector - gotta add 1*

*My data:*


gpt
17844 255 63 286677120
1 64 8191 C12A7328F81F11D2BA4B00A0C93EC93B systemPartition 128
5 8224 520191 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
6 520224 1032191 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
7 1032224 1257471 9D27538040AD11DBBF97000C2911D1B8 vmkDiagnostic 0
8 1257504 1843199 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
9 1843200 7086079 9D27538040AD11DBBF97000C2911D1B8 vmkDiagnostic 0
2 7086080 15472639 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
3 15472640 286677086 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 vmfs 0


*END_DATA*


*Numbers of interest: 286677120, 286677086*

*"Note the AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 - this is a fixed string denoting VMFS volumes so you will have to use the same."*

*Time to attempt repartitioning. We'll use 4, since that partition doesn't already exist...*


partedUtil add /dev/disks/naa.600508b1001c5dd0b075505fceb1e350 gpt "4 286677087 286677120 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 0"
*failed - the add option does not exist*


partedUtil set "/dev/disks/naa.600508b1001c5dd0b075505fceb1e350" "4 286677087 286677120 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 0"
*failed - "Invalid Partition information"*




partedUtil add /dev/disks/naa.600508b1001c5dd0b075505fceb1e350 gpt "4 286677087 286677120 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 0"
*failed - the add option does not exist*


partedUtil set "/dev/disks/naa.600508b1001c5dd075505fceb1e350" "4 286677087 286677120 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 0"
*failed - "Invalid Partition information"*




*Is this line:*
3 15472640 286677086 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 vmfs 0


*an already existing blank space? Do I even need to do anything aside from *

Is the following line:

• 3 15472640 286677086 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 vmfs 0

the vmfs partition that i should be focusing on, rather than trying to create yet another one by hand? Do I only need to do something like:

• vmkfstools -C vmfs6 -S ISO_Store /dev/disks/naa.600508b1001c5dd0b075505fceb1e350:3

To have the datastore that I want? Just curious…