Unable to use VMFS on disk

[BallonGuy]

Hey all

I recently upgraded to 6.5 and the hypervisor is not recognizing the VMFS on one of my logical drives. I can go into the drive and see the VMFS partition in the web console (see below, its the 278GB disk) but I can not access any of the VMS on it, nor does it show up as a datastore. Any idea why that might be? I apologize if this is the wrong forum.

Additional info: the 278GB drive used to hold ESXi 5 but we put a couple of VMs on it. We are trying to get to those VMs now.

[a_p_]

Does the output of

esxcli storage vmfs snapshot list

show information about the VMFS volume?

In case it does, you may be able to mount the datastore manually (see https://kb.vmware.com/kb/1011387​ for details)

André

[TheBobkin]

Hello,

Is that other local drive we see there on the same H710P controller? And if so, is it accessible?

If it is not on same controller (or it is and also not accessible), it might be possible thast the ESXi upgrade updated the driver for this controller to a version that is not compatible with the firmware that is on it, did you upgrade the firmware?

Does it show up in list when you run this on a host? #esxcli storage vmfs extent list

Have you tried connecting directly to the host (not to the vCenter) and see if it is accessible?

Bob

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[BallonGuy]

Thanks for the responses!

@a.p.: It does not. There is no output from that command

@TheBobkin: Yes you see two drives. One was partitioned to hold VMs from the get-go and the other (I believe) was originally just holding the old ESXi image and VMs were put on it later. Both drives are on the same RAID controller. Just the working drive shows up when I enter #esxcli storage vmfs extent list

I can see both drives in /dev/disks/

[a_p_]

Not sure whether I understand this correctly.

Do you say that you have one ESXi 5 on one volume, and ESXi 6 on the other one?

If this is the case, and the visible datastore still has its default name "datastore1", rename it (to avoid duplicate names), and then run a rescan to see whether the second datastore shows up.

André

[BallonGuy]

Oh sorry, I should have been more clear:

There is a partition on the drive that is not working that is ESXi 5. The server used to run off this partition. The server is now running ESXi 6.5 off a USB. The datastore I can use is called VMStore so I think its not the default name. In case this is the issue how would I change the name?

Also when the server was running off ESXi 5 I could use both datastores

[Liffon]

I have the same problem - installed 6.5 through VMware Fusion to a SATA disk in a MacPro - can boot from the disk without MacOS and Fusion but then can't see the default datastore:

esxcli storage vmfs snapshot list

59688a0a-df000649-ceac-000c29eb3116

   Volume Name: datastore1

   VMFS UUID: 59688a0a-df000649-ceac-000c29eb3116

   Can mount: true

   Reason for un-mountability:

   Can resignature: true

   Reason for non-resignaturability:

   Unresolved Extent Count: 1

How can I clear this "Unresolved Extent Count"?

Regards

/Leif Carlsson

[Liffon]

I found the answer here : Re: Unable to use VMFS on disk

Sorry if I bothered anybody.

/Leif Carlsson

[TheBobkin]

Hello Leif,

Thanks for sharing your situation and solution,

but I don't think the cause of your issue was the same as OPs as a.p. already noted to check for snapshot extents previously.

Bob