VMFS creation error: Unable to read partition information from this disk.

When trying to add a VMFS volume in the VIC I received the message “Unable to read partition information from this disk.” I did not have an option to overwrite any data and could not continue. The SAN administrator said that the disk was presented the exact same way that another working LUN was.

At the console I figured out which device it was (esxcfg-vmhbadevs) and tested to see if I could read the partition table.  Here is what I got.

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[me@vmhost me]$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdf

There is a valid AIX label on this disk.
Unfortunately Linux cannot handle these
disks at the moment.  Nevertheless some
advice:
1. fdisk will destroy its contents on write.
2. Be sure that this disk is NOT a still vital
part of a volume group. (Otherwise you may
erase the other disks as well, if unmirrored.)
3. Before deleting this physical volume be sure
to remove the disk logically from your AIX
machine.  (Otherwise you become an AIXpert).

Disk /dev/sdf: 543.0 GB, 543050956800 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 66022 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System

It appears that the LUN was had remnants of a file system that the service console refused to deal with. All I really needed to do was destroy the information on the disk. There are many options for doing this, but the one I chose was to launch fdisk and write an empty DOS partition table by using the o command. A quick w(rite) and I could create a VMFS volume on the LUN.