See http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2036572
This describes the error message and workaround of loading the multiextent kernel module in order to power on Simulate ONTAP on ESX 5.1 and greater. This is because ONTAP 5.1 and greater do not load the multiextent kernel module. The command to load the multiextent kernel module does not persist across reboots. The long term fix is to consolidate the sparse multiextent vmdks in a copy process through vmkfstools per the referenced KB article.
The question is, could we package the VMDKs as separate small VMDKs versus multiextent to avoid this error?
The one multiextent VMDK is revealed below:
jasons-mbp:ESX jgallagher$ ls
vsim_esx-cm vsim_esx-cm.tgz
jasons-mbp:ESX jgallagher$ cd vsim_esx-cm
jasons-mbp:vsim_esx-cm jgallagher$ grep DataONTAP-sim.vmdk *vmx
ide1:1.fileName = "DataONTAP-sim.vmdk"
jasons-mbp:vsim_esx-cm jgallagher$ head -30 DataONTAP-sim.vmdk
# Disk DescriptorFile
version=1
CID=8c1ec616
parentCID=ffffffff
createType="twoGbMaxExtentSparse"
# Extent description
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s001.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s002.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s003.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s004.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s005.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s006.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s007.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s008.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s009.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s010.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s011.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s012.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s013.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s014.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s015.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s016.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s017.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s018.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s019.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s020.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s021.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s022.vmdk"
RW 4192256 SPARSE "DataONTAP-s023.vmdk"
