Cannot unmount datastore

[redbaron51]

Hi all,

We had an old server with loads of HDDs used as "NAS" and presenting 2x iSCSI volumes to ESXi hosts. These volumes were presented to few hosts, on 2x separate datacentres, under same vCentre.

This old server died and we did not bother to bring it back online.

When we logon to vSphere client the datastore is greyed out, but shows as "mounted" and "connected". Operational status is "dead or error".

If I try to unmount the datastore it gives me the error message: "Call "HostStorageSystem.UnmountVmfsVolume" for object "storageSystem-287108" on vCenter Server "vcentreXXX.mydomain.local" failed."

Does it mean that I just need to delete the datastore from the ESXi host?

From vmkwarning log the last entry to this datastore goes back to the day it died.

tail'ing vmkernel.log does not show anything related to this datastore.

comments/suggestions are appreciated.

[fescaros]

You cannot unmount a disconnected datastore, that is expected behaviour.

You essentially have 2 options:

1) Restore connectivty and unmount the datastore and then remove it.

2) Just remove the datastore if you cannot bring it back.

[redbaron51]

thanks for the quick reply....

Option 1 is not possible

Option 2: Any side effects???

[fescaros]

Option 2: Might wanna reboot the host afterwards just to make it stop internally querying if you are still running on ESXi 5.x and have some stuck hostd tasks on it. Apart from that it should(!) not have any side effects. It really depends on what state the host currently is in.

[deepaksel]

Hi, please gone through the below article for PDL and APD you can get clear idea.

Permanent Device Loss (PDL) and All-Paths-Down (APD) in vSphere 5.x and 6.x (2004684) | VMware KB

[maheshvk]

"Call "HostStorageSystem.UnmountVmfsVolume" for object "storage system" on vCenter Server "vCenter" failed.

Cannot unmount volume 'Datastore Name: VMFS uuid: because the file system is busy. Correct the problem and retry the operation

Restarted the hostd service and I was able to unmount the datastore.

/etc/init.d/hostd restart

[Abhay_Patil]

Hi,

I was getting same error during unmount, i have tried all the option to fix this without down time, but to fix this only reboot will help and that worked for me...