Issue with ESXi 6.5 and Datastores disappearing after rebooting host

[kenbshinn]

So this is my first attempt at  ESXi 6.5 and I wanted to see if anyone else has seen this. The hosts are ESXi 6.5 HP Custom image and everytime I reboot the host, the data stores disappear. Everything looks fine under Storage adapters and Storage Devices but the Datastores are just not showing up. However if I run a rescan of all storage adapters everything comes back just fine? I have never seen this with any previous version of ESX before. I thought that it could be an issue with out of date firmware which I then went to HP's site and downloaded the latest  Firmware available and applied it to one of the 3 in my cluster, but no change.

The Hardware is HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8.

[friedman1966]

Same here. HP SL230s with ESXi 6.5 Custom Image. Datastores did not all disappear at once but showed up as umounted/inaccessible. I rescanned and then they disappeared for good from that host. Other hosts in the cluster can still access the datastores just fine.

Any update on this?

[kenbshinn]

Sorry, no updates on this subject at this time. I am going to see about trying the standard image and see if I get better results. I will keep you posted on any updates.

[rekhajain1705]

hi

I had the same issue. The environment has Dell blades.(M630s with IO Aggregators). Used Dell Customized ESXi version ->VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.5.0-5146846.x86_64-Dell_Customized-A02.iso.

To ensure the FCoE adapters are visible, putty into the host, run this command to list of all NICs

1.esxcli fcoe nic list

The above command will list all the nics. Identify the NICs which are used for storage and run the below commands

2.esxcli fcoe nic enable -n vmnicx - x refers to the NIC number.

3.esxcli fcoe nic discover -n vmnicx

After enabling all the NICs for storage run the below command.

4.esxcli system module set --enabled=true --module=fcoe

The FCoE NICs should be visible now. However the story doesnot end here. If you reboot the host, you will face the same issue.

A temporary fix is to run the below command

esxcfg-module -s bnx2fc_autodiscovery=1 bnx2fc

else you can download the driver from the VMware website ->https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?productId=491&downloadGroup=DT-ESX60-QLOGIC-BNX2X-271310V...

or install a version which has the drivers for FCoE.

If you do not wish to go with the above fix, Dell suggests to go with VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.5.0-5146846.x86_64-Dell_Customized-A01.ISO version.

Hope this helps.

[Odurasler2]

old thread, but i wanted to see what your solution was?

[kenbshinn]

Hey, Thanks for your reply, I am not sure why I didn't get the notification that you replied to this when you did. I will give this a shot.

[kenbshinn]

As far as I am aware, I think the issue may have been resolved by upgrading the hosts to the latest version of ESXi 6.5. To be honest with you, I totally forgot about opening this thread until just now when it showed up on my dashboard.

As soon as I am able to I will try to reboot one of those hosts and let you all know the outcome.