Hi - we have esxi hosts and the hosts uses both local and SAN storage. We have encountered problem the other day where SAN storage is not visible in the ESXi host anymore and unable to browse the vdisk. But the virtual machines running on those host where their vdisk is saved in SAN is working perfectly fine. We cannot do anything in the servers as we cant even open the consoles. We have checked the logs but nothing is there. Please help!
you're saying that the VM is running fine but you could not browse the datastore?
Hi idle-jam,
yes. VM is running fine. Like in one of the esxi host, there are 3 servers. Server 1 it uses the local disk and server2,3 uses the SAN storage. both 3 servers were running perfectly fine, server1 we can manage from the host. server2 and 3 we cant as we are not able to log even to the console and san storage is unbrowsable.
try to have a look at this site: you will get the idea.
http://www.randombugs.com/recovery/vmfs-datastore-missing-2.html
hi jam - to be more precise, when i try adding storage through SAN, the mount options (keep the existing signature, assign a new signature, format the disk) is not present. It goes directly to Current Disk Layout after selecting the LUN.
if you go to current disk layout then it's going to format the whole LUN for your. have you follow my earlier advise above? it would help you recover an existing LUN that has data in it.
Which version of ESXi are you using?
Can you send the output of this command (from the hidden console)?
fdisk -l
Andre
HI Jam - yes i have followed your advise above through the console only as LVM config in gui for esxi 4.0 is not available. I have resignature but still no luck. Thanks though for the help
Hi Andre - attached is the fdisk output.
i think the attachment is missing. can you reattach?
reattaching. :smileyhappy:
The fdisk command shows only one disk (the local one).
SAN storage are not present at all.
So check SAN connectivy and configuration.
Hi Andre - thanks will double-check the same. But is it possible that the connection with the SAN is the problem even though when I add a new storage it detects the fiber channel disk? please see attached screenshot when adding new storage. Sorry quite new with SAN storage.
This screenshot say that you can see the SAN LUN.
But it is strange that fdisk does not show the same LUN.