Assigning a SSD to VirtuCache fails if the SSD was being used by another host side caching software

Following up from this KB article on this topic, if the SSD was being used by Infinio, Flashsoft, or PernixData, then it will have a partition on it, that might not be visible from the ‘Erase Partition’ option for that SSD in the vcenter GUI.

Below are the steps you should follow to fix this problem.

1. Put the host in maintenance mode.
2. Use the ‘list-ssd’ command from vnxcli to see if the SSD is being seen by VirtuCache. If the SSD is not listed in the output of the ‘list-ssd’ command, then unload VirtuCache driver (/etc/init.d/vnx2.sh stop) and load it back (/etc/init.d/vnx2.sh start). And then attach the SSD to VirtuCache using the VirtuCache GUI.
3. Now if the SSD is seen but is not being attached, follow the below three steps
   • Use ‘Erase Partition’ option in vCenter GUI to erase all partitions on the SSD
   • If no partitions are seen, then mark the SSD as HDD and then mark is back as Flash
   • Detach the SSD from ESXi and attach it again
4. If all steps in # 3 above fail, use the partedUtil command in ESXi to delete the partition table on the SSD.