For some reason I can't paste anything in the text box, so please bear with me...
I moved 3 physical HDD's from an ESXi 4.1 to an ESXi 5.5 server. The first 2 160GB disks went fine, but than I switched one of the 160GB disks with a 1TB disk (also containing an existing datastor) but I aacidently made a mistake in the RAID controller, so it removed the partition table of this 1TB disk. If read KB2046610 of the VMware Knowledge Base, and I managed to get a partition on the disk, I can also see the original datastore label while running the script in the CLI, it's called "datastore3", and it is present. But I can't get it to show in vSphere, refreshing or rescanning won't work... Adding new storage doesn't work because it doesn't ask me for the 3 options "keep signature, resignature or format" it goes straight to the "VMFS5 or VMFS3" choice. If I choose one of these it goes toe the next step and shows that there is a VMFS partition present using the entire disk, but if I go on from this step it will format the disk (I didn't do that of course).
Once again I'm sorry that I can't paste anything, it makes it very hard for me to explain the issue and the steps that I've already taken in attempt to solve this issue :S But I hope it's clear so that someone might be able point me in the right direction...
Welcome to the Community,
Please take a look at VMware KB: vSphere handling of LUNs detected as snapshot LUNs to persistently mounting the datastore from the command line helps.
André
It keeps coming back with the error: "No unresolved VMFS snapshots with volume label "VMFS".
Not sure where to get the correct label or UUID from.....
>>> "No unresolved VMFS snapshots with volume label "VMFS".
What datastore name (label) do you use in the command. Shouldn't it be "datastore3" rather than "VMFS"?
esxcli storage vmfs snapshot mount -l "datastore3"
can you confirm that the "datastore3" shows up when you run
esxcli storage vmfs snapshot list
André
Yeah sorry, I tried datastore3, but same result.
The command you advice doesn't return any output...
So you say that after recreating the partition you are able to see the partition information and the label correctly?
Just a quick question, is already a datastore attached with the same label "datastore3"? If this is the case, please rename this datastore to see whether this solves the issue (you may need to hit rescan/refresh after renaming the datatastore).
André
I can see the datastore label here: http://misc.schattorie.nl/esx/esxcli.jpg
There is currently only one other datastore connected called OperatingSystems... So there are no duplicates...
Edit: Is this output of any use for you? It does return an error, the correct label and the UUID: http://misc.schattorie.nl/esx/esxcli2.jpg
I'm not sure about the numbers given In the error message, I can't give them any representation...
I knew that the disk was still fine... After connecting it to a Ubuntu machine using vmfs-tools I managed to get into the disk and backup the smallest vmdk, and the file appears to be fine (connected it to another VM)... Too bad that I have to wait for a new HDD to be able to backup the larger vmdk which holds the data that I'm worried about, but I think it will be fine as well...