Restore datastore after move

[stehof]

Hello,

I’m totally new into VMware and I’m having an issue that I doesn’t seem to get solved.

I have a Raspberry Pi 4B with VMware ESXI on it, I had 2 datastore (2 USB drives). 1 datastore for the system and the 2nd for my machines.

The drive with the system files got corrupted so I had to reinstall ESXI, now I want to use the 2nd drive again as my datastore for the machines but the system doesn’t sees the drive.

Any ideas how I could fix this?

[a_p_]

Moderator: Moved to ESXi-Arm Fling

[e_espinel]

Hello.
Did you reinstall VMware vSphere on the same USB drive you were using ? or did you reinstall using a new USB Drive ?

If you reinstall on the same USB drive, was the old partition detected and which option did you choose?

Depending on the option you chose, you may have lost your data.

[stehof]

Hi,

yes I did reinstall the VMware esxi on the same usb drive as before.

when it was up again and I assigned the right static IP, then I plugged in the USB again with the 2nd datastore with my machines, but it doesn’t show up as a device.

Or is there a setting preventing this from showing as security?

[cyprienlaplace]

Hi, have you disabled the usbarbitrator again? You need it disabled or the second disk is considered for USB passthrough and not as datastore for ESXi.

/etc/init.d/usbarbitrator stop
chkconfig usbarbitrator off

[stehof]

Thanks, that solved the issue from not seeing the device and datastore.

So the datastore is visible now and I can see the files and machines. But somehow the files doesn't seem to be accessible, if I try to copy the .vmdk for example, it gives me this error:

Key

haTask--vim.VirtualDiskManager.copyVirtualDisk-3489637614

Description

Copy the disk, either a datastore path or a URL referring to the virtual disk

Datastore:

[datastore2] Unify/Unify.vmdk

State

Failed - A general system error occurred: Invalid argument

Errors

And when I try to register the machine by Create / Register VM > Register an exciting virtual machine > select DS2 and the right .vmx > Finish it will add the machine, but the state is Invalid and I'm not able to do anything with it.
This is the output of the task after import:

Key

haTask-ha-folder-vm-vim.Folder.registerVm-3489637651

Description

Adds an existing virtual machine to the folder

Folder:

State

Completed successfully

Errors

So then I created a totally new VM with the right settings, during the setup I choice to add a HDD and choice the existing .vmdk file from the machine, after creating I tried to power it up, but still nothing, he won't power up, this is the output:

Key

haTask-6-vim.VirtualMachine.powerOn-3489637579

Description

Power On this virtual machine

Virtual machine:

unifyController

State

Failed - File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed

Errors

• File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed
• 22 (Invalid argument)
• Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/5f4e5df7-d0c2d2fc-58c6-dca632d62882/Unify/Unify.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.
• Module 'Disk' power on failed.
• Failed to start the virtual machine.

Any thoughts what I could do to fix this?

[cyprienlaplace]

Hi, I see two potential issues here.

The first one for the invalid state: it might be because of the hwversion of the VM. The latest release got a little more restrictive. Make sure it says 'virtualHW.version = "17"' in the .vmx file.

For the second issue about vmdk, simply copying the vmdk to a VMFS filesystem is not enough, you need to go through some importation tool. See https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.storage.doc/GUID-01D3CF47-A84A-4988... for the command. e.g: 

vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/myVMFS/templates/gold-primary.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/myVMFS/myOS.vmdk -d thin

Cyprien

[stehof]

Thanks for the help, I tried the command but it failed because he couldn't find such file.

Then I run "ls -la /vmfs/volumes/myVMFS/" of course I filled out myVMFS with the right folder for my datastore, and I saw that the templates folder doesn't seem to exist.

Another Issue why the machines doesn't seem to start, there is a .lck file in the directory but it won't let me remove it, when I cd into the folder and command "rm Unify.vmx.lck" it says "rm: remove 'Unify.vmx.lck'?" and replied Y, y, Yes, yes and YES but nothing seem to do the trick, also just enter it don't delete the file...

[stehof]

Any suggestions..? Anybody?

[cyprienlaplace]

Hi,

On the command line "vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/myVMFS/templates/gold-primary.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/myVMFS/myOS.vmdk -d thin"

• /vmfs/volumes/myVMFS/templates/gold-primary.vmdk  is the name of the disk you want to copy.
• /vmfs/volumes/myVMFS/myOS.vmdk is the destination name, for the copy.

Cyprien

[stehof]

Hi Cyprien,

Thanks, I did try that exact command (like: "vmkfstools -i //vmfs/volumes/MY_Data_STORE/Unify/Unify.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/MY_Data_STOREunifyController/Unify.vmdk -d thin") but it failed with this error: "Invalid argument (1441801)."

I thinks it has something to do with the .lck file that I'm not able to remove. Because the ESXi server crashed when the machine were on (I guess...) there is a VMname.vmx.lck file in the folder which won't let itself be deleted.

When I command "vmkfstools -D /vmfs/volumes/<My_DATA_STORE>/Unify/Unify.vmx" this is the output:

Lock [type 10c00001 offset 7643136 v 96, hb offset 3702784
gen 253, mode 1, owner 5f4e5638-df2877ea-b962-dca632d62882 mtime 4734
num 0 gblnum 0 gblgen 0 gblbrk 0]
Addr <4, 0, 21>, gen 25, links 1, type reg, flags 0, uid 0, gid 0, mode 100755
len 3496, nb 0 tbz 0, cow 0, newSinceEpoch 0, zla 4305, bs 65536
affinityFD <4,0,20>, parentFD <4,0,20>, tbzGranularityShift 20, numLFB 0
lastSFBClusterNum 0, numPreAllocBlocks 0, numPointerBlocks 0

And when I CD into the folder of the machine and command LS -LA, this is the output:

drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         77824 Sep  2  2020 .
drwxr-xr-t    1 root     root         73728 Sep  1  2020 ..
-rw-------    1 root     root     2147483648 Nov 14  2020 Unify-e8f544e3.vswp
-rw-------    1 root     root     34359738368 Nov 14  2020 Unify-flat.vmdk
-rw-------    1 root     root        270840 Nov 14  2020 Unify.nvram
-rw-------    1 root     root           499 Sep  2  2020 Unify.vmdk
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root             0 Sep  1 15:28 Unify.vmsd
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          3496 Sep  2  2020 Unify.vmx
-rw-------    1 root     root             0 Sep  2  2020 Unify.vmx.lck
-rw-------    1 root     root           154 Sep  2  2020 Unify.vmxf
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          3391 Sep  2  2020 Unify.vmx~
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        297383 Sep  1  2020 vmware-1.log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        175795 Sep  2  2020 vmware-2.log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        369772 Sep  2  2020 vmware-3.log
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root      11532535 Nov 14  2020 vmware.log
-rw-------    1 root     root      90177536 Sep  2  2020 vmx-Unify-8854f0be9f7dbd34ba697eabc2cf489d41d4ac65-1.vswp

So the .vmdk file that I see in the web GUI while browsing the datastore, is still locked and the data is stored under Unify-flat.vmdk, but I tried every single suggestion of the forum but I still can't unlock it or do anything with the Unify-flat.vmdk file...

[stehof]

Here you can see the status of the locked vmx file: 

/vmfs/volumes/MY_DATA_STORE/Unify] vmfsfilelockinfo -p /vmfs/volumes/MY_DATA_STORE/Unify/Unify.vmx -i

vmfsfilelockinfo Version 2.0

Looking for lock owners on "Unify.vmx"
"Unify.vmx" is locked in Exclusive mode by host having mac address ['xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx']
Trying to use information from VMFS Heartbeat

Host owning the lock on file is 192.168.0.10, lockMode : Exclusive
Total time taken : 4.8159201670005132 seconds.