Fixed: Call "HostDatastoreSystem.QueryVmfsDatastoreCreateOptions" for object "datastoreSystem-xxxx" on vCenter Server "VC FQDN" failed.

The other day when attempting to create a new VMFS datastore on an ESXI (6.0) host I encountered the following message:

Call "HostDatastoreSystem.QueryVmfsDatastoreCreateOptions" for object "datastoreSystem-xxxx" on vCenter Server "VC FQDN" failed.

On further investigation it turns out that this usually happens when either the partition table type is not set to GPT / MSDOS or is invalid in some way. This is quite common when re-using old disks that were used by other systems.

Note: ESXI 5.0+ will only work with either GPT or msdos partition tables.

However the disk I was working with was brand new and was in fact a RAID'ed disk created by the HP Storage Administrator utility - i'm not sure whether the HP Storage Administrator created a GPT partition table or not - but either way ESXI did not like it.

So instead we are forced to re-create a GPT partition table (since this disk I was working with was ~4TB.)

Firstly lets enable SSH on the ESXI host - once in we can issue the following command to provide us with a list of disks connected to the host - so we can identify the relevant disk UID:

esxcli storage core device list

You are looking for the devfs path e.g.:

/vmfs/devices/disks/naa.220118b1100111p04kf39111111

partedUtil mklabel /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.220118b1100111p04kf39111111 gpt

or for an msdos partition table:

partedUtil mklabel /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.220118b1100111p04kf39111111 msdos

Finally attempt to re-create the datastore - but remember to re-scan the disks!

Sources:
Identifying disks when working with VMware ESXi/ESX (1014953): https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1014953

Troubleshooting the Add Storage Wizard error: Unable to read partition information from this disk (1008886): https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1008886