U3 -> U4 upgrade failed - local VMFS partition lost

[patbuck]

I did an ESXi 3.5 upgrade from U3 to U4 through VI Client and rebooted as suggested. Logged in again and... ... POW!

All the machines are grayed out and named "Unknown (inaccessible)" and the local disk they where on is "gone". I had a local VMFS file system for the machines on the boot drive but it is not mounted after reboot. If I click add storage in VI Client, choose my boot disk and click all the way to the overwrite warning, I see can see the VMFS partition in the current disk layout.

The disk is attached to a Gigabyte EG45M-DS2H motherboard's internal controller. I read about in the ESX forum (after failing my upgrade of course) about Intel ICH10 chipsets that where working with ESX U3 and stopped working after upgrading to U4. Can this be related to my issue with ESXi? The suggestion was to reinstall U3 but I am worried that the ESXi installer will wipe my VMFS partition since it was on the boot device.

Where do I go from here? Any suggestions appreciated!

Cheers,

Patrik

[patbuck]

My current battle plan is to try to ghost the whole drive with g4l in case something goes wrong with the recovery. After that I was thinking I might install U3 on a fresh drive and put the current as slave.

Pros/Cons/Better solutions?

Cheers,

Patrik

[depping]

You will probably need to resignature the disk... check this article: http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/no_persistent_storage_after_upgrade.php

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator

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[patbuck]

Looks good, I will give it a shot when the ghosting is done and report back.

Cheers,

Patrik

[patbuck]

Worked like a charm, thanks!