8tb enterprise nvme that works with ESXi (mainly 6.7+) (ie supports 512b)

[james23]

can anyone ID some 8tb (7.68tb) NVMe enterprise drives that allow / support 512b formatting (so that they will work as a datastore, direct attach on esxi 6.7u3)

i buy from ebay (and test , TEST), and have been striking out recently with 8tb SSDs.

a micron 7300 pro nvme, pdf specs said supports 512b/ 4k, but it will only allow 4k format (and blocks you from deleting the 1x namespace , i tried on both freebsd and ubuntu22, both gave the same nvme errors - ie errors like: ` NVMe status: OPERATION_DENIED (0x6015)` ect).

so i just wanted to check here, before ordering another (incase maybe due to their large 8tb size, prehaps only 4k sectors , with no option to format to 512b are the norm).

(so others can avoid it, if they need 512b, the exact model is: 7.68tb NVMe - Micron_7300 -MTFDHBE7T6TD )

(i mainly use nfs / iscsi from a zfs truenas box, but i always like have direct atached storage as a backup, and for the times i need performance for a specific VM).

thank you!

 

[james23]

EDIT: still would like others to post confirm working 8tb NVMe enterprise dirves working in esxi (512b) - i can myself say WD sn640 at 4tb works, same with intel p3700 at 1.6tb.
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wow, so as i said i tried EVERYTHING to get this drive to 512b sector (so i can use it in esxi, as at 4k it was showing up, but i could not format it). its a micron 7300 pro at 7.68tb u.2 nvme (is 7mm thick fyi)

so i was about to return it to the seller, and i figured let me try the micron tool (Micron Storage Executive on win11 in my case). All looked good health wise in the micron app, but format to 512 (or any namespace operations failed in storage exectuve, just like was the case on freebsd/ubuntu/win11 and esxi 6.7). so still stuck at 4k sectors via the micron app. also the app showed it did have the latest firmware ( 954300P0 - btw yesterday i did also try loading the older firmware in one of the 3x firmware banks, it succsefully changed to the older FW but was still giving all the same errors on trying to get it to 512b)

was about to give up and saw this PSID Revert option (in Micron Storage Executive app), it requires that you fill in the 32x chars of the PSID from the physical label on the drive. I did this, it showed success. AND NOW I CAN FORMAT it to 512b (or 4k, or any of the namespace actions!).
so fyi to others, here is the screen (you can freely download the Micron Storage Executive app from micron website, no login needed):

EDIT2 - note i did have to install the micron nvme windows driver, to do one of the operations in Micron Storage Executive app (the installer is included with the app) - so im not sure if that driver was required to do the PSID Revert operation, but note that i did have it installed at the time i did the revert operation
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will update if esxi now allows it to be used as its at 512b now.

 

[james23]

see my post / update above - but can now confirm that once its formatted to 512b, the 7.68tb micron 7300 u.2 DOES work on esxi 6.7u3 (as direct attach datastore):

 

[BlueFox]

The Intel D7-P5520 15.36TB I have in my desktop looks to be 512 byte. I can only presume the smaller capacities are as well.