Resolving Error "Failed to clear disk on...." when clearing a partition table

I'm starting a new project and I needed to spin up a single nested ESXi host and deploy a VCSA to manage and integrate with NSX.  I used to run a VSAN cluster a while back to get more familiar with the product but disabled it when I was finished.  When starting this new project I decided to utilise the SSD in my host as a datastore for my new nested ESXi host to improve performance.  I upgrade the host to ESXi 6.0 U2 to utilise the new HTML5 host Web Interface and started to create the new SSD Datastore.  I first had to clear the existing partition table which is a lot easier in the web client now rather than having to use the CLI but I encountered the "Failed to clear disk Local HP Disk" error:

I then tried to do this via partedUtil but encountered a "Read-only file system during write on" error:

I verified the device wasn't being used for any existing datastore's, DRM's or diagnostic logs:

I remembered that this device was previously used for VSAN so checked that it still wasn't a member of the cluster, which it wasn't, but the devices were still associated with the disk group somehow:

Problem was resolved by using the "esxcli vsan storage remove -u <VSAN UUID>" to disassociate the device from the VSAN Cluster:

Once this was completed the devices were no longer in use and I could clear the partitions and create a local datastore.

HA Issues with VSAN Beta Refresh

With the latest release of the VSAN Beta software I decided to rebuild my VSAN nested lab.  I've always used the .ova that William Lam (Blog | Twitter) created here as it's easier than having to configure the VM's individually.  I've always kept the VM defaults of 4GB RAM and 2 x vCPU's but increase the disk sizes and added an additional NIC.

After installing and configuring ESXi and then enabling VSAN it was time to enable HA.  After trying to enable I received the following error message:

The fdm-installer.log showed the following:

fdm-installer: [47599] 2013-12-17 10:35:51: Logging to /var/run/log/fdm-installer.log
fdm-installer: [47599] 2013-12-17 10:35:51: extracting vpx-upgrade-installer/VMware-fdm-eesx-2-linux-1440532.tar.gz...
[47599] 2013-12-17 10:35:51: exec rm -f /tmp/vmware-root/ha-agentmgr/upgrade
[47599] 2013-12-17 10:35:51: status = 0
[47599] 2013-12-17 10:35:51: exec cd /tmp/vmware-root/ha-agentmgr/vpx-upgrade-installer
[47599] 2013-12-17 10:35:51: status = 0
fdm-installer: [47599] 2013-12-17 10:35:51: Installing the VIB
fdm-installer: [47599] 2013-12-17 10:35:53: Result of esxcli software vib install  -v=/tmp/vmware-root/ha-agentmgr/vpx-upgrade-installer
fdm-installer:  [Errno 28] No space left on device
fdm-installer:        vibs = VMware_bootbank_vmware-fdm_5.5.0-1440532
fdm-installer:  Please refer to the log file for more details.
fdm-installer: [47599] 2013-12-17 10:35:53: All done! Status: 0

The no space left on the device error confused me so in order to rectify the issue I tried the following:

1. Increases the size of the VMDK used for the ESXi installation from 2GB to 5GB
2. Inflated the ESXi installation VMDK so it was Thick Eager Zero'd just in case this was causing any strange issues
3. Rebuild the nested environment manually (not using the .ova supplied by William Lam)

Not of the above resolved the issue.  After raising it in the VSAN Beta forums Duncan Epping (Blog | Twitter) advised to increase the memory assigned to the nested VSAN VM's from 4GB to 6GB.  In my previous nested VSAN environment I had no issues running VSAN with 4GB.  After increasing all three hosts to 6GB the FDM vib installed and HA enabled successfully.