I recently installed a Samsung SSD in a vSphere ESXi 5.5u1 host. The previously owned drive was removed from a DELL laptop that was running Windows 7. When I attempted to use the vSphere client to Add Storage… I received the error “Call “HostStorageSystem.ComputeDiskPartitionInfo” for object “storageSystem” on ESXi failed.” A 2nd attempt to Add Storage…resulted in the same error. I knew that the drive had a data partition but had hoped that vSphere ESXi 5.5 would be able to delete it. Because the drive was installed in a server that was in a remote location (it was in my house, and I was on the road) I wasn’t able to remove it to delete the partitions with my MacBook Pro. Fortunately I was able to use the partitioning utility partedUtil from the command line of the ESXi host. If you are experiencing the same problem follow these steps:
1. Open an SSH connection to your ESXi host with PuTTy.
2. Login as root.
3. Type the command esxcfg-scsidevs -l (This command will list all of your SCSI devices, note the t10. address for your disk.
4. Type the command partedUtil get /dev/disks/t10. (You have to add the entire t10. address, use the tab key to prefill) This command will list all of the partitions on the disk.
5. Type the command partedUtil delete /dev/disks/t10. 1 (You have to add the entire t10. address, use the tab key to prefill, adding a space and the number 1 at the end will delete partition 1, since I only had one partition on my disk I was finished after this command).
Once I had deleted the partition, attempting to Add Storage… using the vSphere client was successful!
