Pool creation fails

TrueNAS General
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1

Hi all,

I 've run to a problem and would appreciate your advice or ideas.

I am setting up a new TrueNAS core system as a VM in esxi8.
The settings for the VM are:
48GB RAM
4 CPUs from (11th Gen Intel(R) Core™ i5-11400T @ 1.30GHz (1296.00-MHz K8-class CPU) )
LSI SAS3008 9300-16i controller in passthrough mode
3 x TOSHIBA MG08ACA1 16TB disks for data, brand new

The disks all show up in TrueNAS, short and long SMART tests finish without errors (I even tested them separately before putting them in the system). However, when I try to create a raid-z pool after a few minutes the VM crashes (either restarts, or shuts down). There are no alerts in the dashboard, just an information entry that the scrub finished successfully before the pool creation.

This is a new install (home lab) without data or any ‘live’ workload, so I can do any tests you can advise.

Thanks

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2

Can you elaborate? I don’t know about a scrub running prior to creating a pool. This could be new knowledge for me but what data would be scrubbed? The pool doesn’t exist yet after creation wouldn’t contain any data.

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3

Sorry my mistake!
I meant disk wipe

4

What is the output of sas2flash -list? Are you running IT firmware on the HBA?

What are you using as the boot drive?

5

This is a VM running on esxi 8, the boot drive is of course the VM’s boot disk.
The controller is in IT mode, fw v.16

Avago Technologies SAS3 Flash Utility
Version 17.00.00.00 (2018.04.02)
Copyright 2008-2018 Avago Technologies. All rights reserved.

Adapter Selected is a Avago SAS: SAS3008(C0)

Controller Number              : 0
Controller                     : SAS3008(C0)
PCI Address                    : 00:05:00:00
SAS Address                    : 500062b-2-040c-4d40
NVDATA Version (Default)       : 0e.01.00.03
NVDATA Version (Persistent)    : 0e.01.00.03
Firmware Product ID         : 0x2221 (IT)
Firmware Version              : 16.00.12.00
NVDATA Vendor                : LSI
NVDATA Product ID           : SAS9300-16i
BIOS Version                     : 08.11.00.00
UEFI BSD Version             : 06.00.00.00
FCODE Version                 : N/A
Board Name                      : SAS9300-16i
Board Assembly                 : 03-25600-01B
Board Tracer Number        : SP82711567

Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
Exiting SAS3Flash.
7

Update: The controller is fine, no problems whatsoever. After many tests the conclusion is that the esxi VM crashes due to some issue in esxi itself or the settings for the VM. I installed TrueNAS directly on the server (on a different drive without touching esxi). No problems whatsoever, I could configure the disks, create pool, etc. So it’s evident that some configuration setting(s) cause the problem. So I am thinking the issue is on esxi.

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