WilliamLam.com

Quick Tip - Crucial NVMe SSD not recognized by ESXi 6.7 & 7.0

by // 86 Comments

If you own or have recently purchased Crucial NVMe SSD such as CT1000P1SSD8 (1TB M.2 NVMe SSD) or CT500P1SSD8 (500GB M.2 NVMe SSD), please be aware that these devices may no be recognized by ESXi after upgrading to the latest release. Thanks to Pete Lindley, (OCTO for End-User Computing), who reached out last week regarding the observation as well as a workaround for the problem. This was also quite timely as I recently purchased a Crucial M.2 NVMe SSD and would have also ran into this problem.

It turns out these Crucial devices were working fine while running on ESXi 6.5 Update 2 but was no longer recognized in latest release of ESXi 6.7 Update 2. It is unclear whether support for these SSDs were removed intentionally or unintentionally, but in either case, these devices are not officially on VMware's Hardware Compatibility List (HCL).

UPDATE (07/29/20) - Over the past few months, I have had a number of folks share feedback that using the trick mentioned below for ESXi 7.0, they have had success of ESXi detecting their NVMe SSD. I wanted to share some of the model and/or vendors that folks have reported success with. I will keep this list updated, so feel free to leave a comment below.

UPDATE (06/13/20) - Thanks to reader Dave, it looks like this trick also works with ESXi 7.0 but the filename has changed. Simply copy nvme.v00 VIB from the ESXi 6.5 Update 2 and replace it on ESXi 7.0 system (either live under /bootbank or part of the installer) but rename the file to nvme_pci.v00 which is the new filename for NVMe driver.

UPDATE (05/23/19) - After speaking with a few folks who took a closer look, the issue is due to the fact that we added support for NVMe 1.3 spec in latest ESXi 6.7 Update 2 release, but because these are "consumer" devices, they did not conform to the latest specification and hence the driver is unable to claim the device. This is another good reminder when using components not on VMware HCL, this is always a risk from a home lab perspective. In general, I know Samsung and Intel NVMe SSD usually works quite well without issues but always good to do some research. I think Engineering is looking to see if there are other workarounds for the future, but for now, you can use the workaround below.

The easy workaround that Pete found was to simply replace the NVMe driver from ESXi 6.7 Update 2 (1.2.2.27-1vmw.670.2.48.13006603) with one found in ESXi 6.5 Update 2 (1.2.1.34-1vmw.650.2.50.8294253). To so do, simply copy nvme.v00 to /bootbank from either an existing ESXi 6.5 Update 2 system or directly from the ISO. Please note, any future updates or patches to the ESXi host will most likely override the updated driver.

SMART drive data now available using vSAN Management 6.6 API

by // 1 Comment

One of the major storage enhancements that was introduced in vSphere 5.1 as part of the new I/O Device Management (IODM) framework was the addition of SMART (Self Monitoring, Analysis And Reporting Technology) data for monitoring FC, FCoE, iSCSI, SAS protocol statistics, this is especially useful for monitoring the health of an SSD device. Historically, there was not a public vSphere API to consume this information and customers had to rely on ESXCLI which is not very friendly from a programmatic standpoint.


One of the nice enhancements that was introduced in vSAN 6.6 from an API standpoint is that you can now access SMART data using the vSAN Management 6.6 API. The other really cool thing about this enhancement is that although this API was added under the vSAN Management API, you do not actually have to be using vSAN to be able to use this new API!

There are two methods in which you can access the SMART data:

  • vCenter Server - When connecting to a vCenter Server, you can access the VsanQueryVcClusterSmartStatsSummary() method which is available as part of the VsanVcClusterHealthSystem and you simply just provide it the name of a vSphere Cluster.
  • ESXi Host - When connecting directly to an ESXi host, you can access the VsanHostQuerySmartStats() method which is available as part of the HostVsanHealthSystem.

To demonstrate how these two new APIs work, I have create two sample scripts: vsan-smarts-data-sample.py using vSAN Management SDK for Python and VSANSmartsData.ps1 using the new PowerCLI Get-VsanView cmdlet.

Here is an example of running the python sample:

python vsan-smarts-data-sample.py -s 192.168.1.200 -u '*protected email*' -p 'VMware1!' -c VSAN-Cluster


Here is an example of running the PowerCLI sample:

Get-VSANSmartsData -Cluster VSAN-Cluster

Apple Mac Pro 6,1 PCIe SSD issue resolved w/ESXi 6.0 Update 2

by // 6 Comments

Early last year, the new Apple Mac Pro 6,1 (aka black can design) was certified and fully supported on vSphere 6.0 which I had blogged about here. Several months later, customers discovered that some of the newer Mac Pro 6,1 units were shipping with different model of their PCIe SSD device than what was originally released at GA. This was problematic because ESXi was not aware of this newer device and could not detect during or after installation. Although a work around was identified for customers looking to install either ESXi 5.x or 6.x on the newer Apple Mac Pros, it definitely was not ideal.

It has taken a bit longer than expected, but the issue has now been resolved with the latest release of ESXi 6.0 Update 2. A similar fix will be available for customers running ESXi 5.5 in a future update. You can find the direct download for ESXi 6.0 Update 2 in link below which includes a pointer to the release notes in case you are interested in other fixes included in this release.