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Nmh
Contributor
Contributor

ESXI 6.7 Missing Datastore

Hi,

My ESXI box has been working fine but tonight I gave it a reboot and upon coming back up one of my datastores has vanished Smiley Sad, the drive the datastore is on shows as present in the devices. I have included pictures, please can someone help me?

It has been restarted before without issue so not sure why it did this on this reboot.

thank you for your help

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Beingnsxpaddy
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

With this, there are two possibilities, as I check the logs again it seems that the target is not responding (which means when system tried to bring WD drive up it failed as drive wasn't responding. But as you suggested same drive is coming up on other systems, this shouldn't be the drive itself. Next course to get this working on the same system is to update the driver and firmware for the disk.

Another scenario could be the partition table is corrupt and that's why its not getting detected for mount.

I would first update the driver and firmware for the drive and then, will look at the next step (Partition table).

Regards Pradhuman VCIX-NV, VCAP-NV, vExpert, VCP2X-DCVNV If my Answer resolved your query don't forget to mark it as "Correct Answer".
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Nmh
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

When I took the drive out and connected to another machine I used UFS explorer to get the files out and see that there is a VMFS on the drive.

I ran the commands, esxcli system module list | grep vmw_ahci this showed as enabled

esxcli software vib list | grep ahci , Both show as enabled, if I disable the vmw driver will that stop the other drives working?

I have purchased a new drive and waiting for it to arrive, I think I will make a new Datastore then copy the data back into it but it will be interesting to fix this broken Datastore.

thank you for your help Smiley Happy

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

UFSexplorer can be regarded as the reference tool for reading VMFS.
It can read VMFS-volumes that can NOT be repaired with ESXi itself.


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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Beingnsxpaddy
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

What timezone you are working, we may be able to look at it together.

Regards Pradhuman VCIX-NV, VCAP-NV, vExpert, VCP2X-DCVNV If my Answer resolved your query don't forget to mark it as "Correct Answer".
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Nmh
Contributor
Contributor

Hi all,

I have my VMs back up and running with a new drive and data restored from the other drive.

thank you for all the advice and help Smiley Happy

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gbanta001
Contributor
Contributor

I have to reply with the solution I found after going from version 6.5 to 6.7.  I have to give all the credit to this person and not me.

https://masteringvmware.com/force-mount-vmfs-datastore-using-esxcli/

[root@esxi:~] esxcli storage vmfs snapshot list

5af66348-b31aacc1-b478-ecb1d73e4acc

   Volume Name: datastore2

   VMFS UUID: 5af66348-b31aacc1-b478-ecb1d73e4acc

   Can mount: true

   Reason for un-mountability:

   Can resignature: true

   Reason for non-resignaturability:

   Unresolved Extent Count: 1

[root@esxi:~]

[root@esxi:~]

[root@esxi:~]

[root@esxi:~]

[root@esxi:~] esxcli storage vmfs snapshot listmount -l datastore2

fennecnee
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you for posting this @gbanta001 I had the issue after cloning my home ESXi install to a larger SSD. The volume would show as mounted but the datastore was missing. Pasting my output here because you have a typo in yours:

 

[root@esxi:~] esxcli storage vmfs snapshot list
61532b67-0bd0ad60-e5c1-1cfd0872a79e
Volume Name: datastore
VMFS UUID: 61532b67-0bd0ad60-e5c1-1cfd0872a79e
Can mount: true
Reason for un-mountability:
Can resignature: true
Reason for non-resignaturability:
Unresolved Extent Count: 1

[root@esxi:~] esxcli storage vmfs snapshot mount -u 61532b67-0bd0ad60-e5c1-1cfd0872a79e

 

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