Nested ESXi 8.0 on PVE 8.0 host

[acidrop]

Trying to install ESXi v8.0 as a nested VM on a PVE 8.0 host, but the installer fails at the installation phase with the following error:

"Disk device does not support OSDATA"

(see attached screenshots)

According to VMware [1] the above message is shown when the installer detects the local disk used for the installation as a sd card or s usb disk (i.e non peristent disk). However, this is not the case here as I'm using SATA or IDE disk for the setup.

Any ideas ?

Thanks

[1]
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/85615

 

[bbgeek17]

Why not use SCSI , that should work.

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Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox

 

[acidrop]

Why not use SCSI , that should work.

---

Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox

Tried all SCSI controller options available in PVE, but unfortunately none of them seem to be detected by ESXi installer (only IDE and SATA controllers are being setected).

 

[bbgeek17]

Thats strange, I just created a VM with with ESX installer connected as cdrom and used default scsi controller - (LSI 53C895A)
It booted deep into install before failing on memory allocation, which can probably solved by adding more memory..

---

Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox

 

[acidrop]

You mean the installer was able to detect the disk and then install ESXi normally ?

 

[acidrop]

Ok, I tried installing a different ESXi version (7.0.3) and this time it succeeded (on a SATA vdisk). So the issue must be ESXi v8.0/PVE v8.0 specific.

Thanks

 

[lejeczek]

I hit the very same issue while on Qemu/KVM with libvirt - only have tried esxi 8.x though. Qemu 8.1.0

 

[LnxBil]

I reproduced the OSData problem with ESXi 8 and PVE 7. As far as I understood, the OSData disk has to be of a minimum size, so having a too small disk for installing ESXi will result in the error. This has been true for ESXi 7, too. More information can be found here. If you choose a bigger disk, the installer will just work. I tried the workaround in the article with a smaller disk, but was not able to circumvent the error. I used a 64G disk and it just went through the installer.

 

[0711it]

I reproduced the OSData problem with ESXi 8 and PVE 7. As far as I understood, the OSData disk has to be of a minimum size, so having a too small disk for installing ESXi will result in the error. This has been true for ESXi 7, too. More information can be found here. If you choose a bigger disk, the installer will just work. I tried the workaround in the article with a smaller disk, but was not able to circumvent the error. I used a 64G disk and it just went through the installer.

I can confirm this solution works with PVE 8.4 and ESXi 8.0.3
LSI53C895A / LIS53C810 / MegaRAID SAS 8708EM2 was not working for installation(no disks detected) and will also not be detected after installation is finished/esx booted (not listed under storage devices)
I went with sata for now.