" partedUtil Failed with message:Error " During ESXi Installation on HP ConvergedSystem 242-HC

Recently, I was delivering a POC using the HP ConvergedSystems 242-HC and ran into the below issue. I was not able to find any solution online or on HPE's Website and hence decided to share this information in case anyone else runs into this issue. I don't think all customers would face this as the 242-HC comes pre-installed with VMware ESXi.If, you have had to reinstall the entire unit from scratch,you might face this issue on the 242-HC/250-HC and the same solution should apply.

Hopefully, when I have the time I will write a review about this product.

You can find more information about HP's Hyper Converged Systems here : HP ConvergedSystem 200-HC StoreVirtual

Issue : 

1) The 242-HC comes in a 2U chasis, with 4 Nodes and each node has 6 drives of it's own. 2 of them being SSD and the rest 4 are SAS. For the installation of the ESXi and running the HP StoreVirtual VM ,we need to create a " Logical Volume" using the SAS disks and then create a Logical Drive of 150GB. On this 150GB partition we will install ESXi first and then on the remaining space we create a VMFS volume onto which we import the VSA StoreVirtual Appliance. The problem is after you create the Logical drive, and during the installation of ESXi  you will get the below error message. 

Figure 1: Operation Failed.

Solution:

1) The Solution that worked for me was to create a 150GB Logical drive and change the "Parity Initialization Method " to Rapid instead of Default. This will take more time for the drive to be initialized so please be patient....

Find below the details about what this setting does:

Rapid Parity Initialization:

When you create a logical drive, you must initialize the parity using Rapid Parity Initialization.

RAID levels that use parity (RAID 5, RAID 6 (ADG), RAID 50, and RAID 60) require that the parity blocks be initialized to valid values. Valid parity data is required to enable enhanced data protection through background surface scan analysis and higher performance write operations. Two initialization methods are available:  

• Default – Initializes parity blocks in the background while the logical drive is available for access by the operating system. A lower RAID level results in faster parity initialization.

• Rapid – Overwrites both the data and parity blocks in the foreground. The logical drive remains invisible and unavailable to the operating system until the parity initialization process completes. All parity groups are initialized in parallel, but initialization is faster for single parity groups (RAID 5 and RAID 6). RAID level does not affect system performance during rapid initialization.

Figure 2: Parity Initialization Method

Hope the information helps....  As usual, if you have any questions... please leave a comment.

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