inaccessible vms

[Ruud0701]

Hi all,

I recently installed vmware ESXi5 onto one of our mobile workstations. Installation went smoothly, I created 2 datastores, since I have 2 seperate 250GB disks and I installed 3 vm's on datastore 2, whereas I use datastore1 to hold installationfiles and ISOs. Everything went fine so far.

But after a reboot, I don't see datastore2 anymore, so my vm's are all inaccessible.

I've performed an upgrade to ESXi5 build 623860, but no luck in seeing my datastore2 back again.

In configuration - storage I can see that both local ATA disks are mounted.

Tried to rescan, but datastore is not coming back.

Anyone has an idea ?

[MauroBonder]

Hi and Welcome to the Communities,

Do you already tried restart service in this host vmware ? running services.sh restart

also read -

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2172

[Ruud0701]

Thanks for your reply. I have started my ESXi host several times, so I guess the services did get their restarts.

Situation is now even worse, because I marked my storage adapter for passthrough I/O to see whether that solved the issue.

Now I lost my other datastore too. Resetting the passthrough I/O and restarting seems not to work while the passthrough is enabled after every restart (probably because the setting can't be written).

Perhaps anybody has a solution for this situation too ?

[continuum]

what does ls /dev/disks show ?

[nielse]

Is datastore a local disk or SAN/NAS storage? Can you ping the storage from your host?

[Ruud0701]

/dev/disks is empty and I have local storage.

This is a part of the syslog

2012-03-27T08:33:48Z jumpstart: unable to create session: Operation not permitted

2012-03-27T08:33:48Z jumpstart: dependencies for plugin 'restore-host-cache' not met (missing: vcfs)

2012-03-27T08:33:48Z vmkmicrocode: Warning: Line size is greater than expected size 242

2012-03-27T08:33:48Z vmkmicrocode: File microcode_amd_0x100fa0.bin does not contain a valid microcode update for any of the processors

2012-03-27T08:33:48Z vmkmicrocode: File microcode-1027.dat does not contain a valid microcode update for any of the processors

2012-03-27T08:33:48Z vmkmicrocode: File m4010676860C0001.dat does not contain a valid microcode update for any of the processors

2012-03-27T08:33:48Z vmkmicrocode: File m03106a5.dat does not contain a valid microcode update for any of the processors

2012-03-27T08:33:48Z vmkmicrocode: Warning: Directory /etc/vmware/microcode/ does not contain a valid microcode update for this processor

2012-03-27T08:33:57Z vmkdevmgr: DriverMap: 60 maps loaded. 754 entries.

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: VmKernelNicInfo::LoadConfig: Storing previous management interface:'vmk0'

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: RoutingInfo: Unable to restore VMkernel default gateway (172.19.43.2) :Unable to set VMkernel gateway address. Please verify your IP settings and try again

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: RoutingInfo: Unable to restore VMkernel default gateway (172.19.43.2) :Unable to set VMkernel gateway address. Please verify your IP settings and try again

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: No iBFT data present in the BIOS

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: execution of 'system coredump partition set --enable=true --smart' failed in context dump-partition[start]': Unable to smart activate a dump partition. Error was: No suitable diagnostic partitions found..

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: Using policy dir /etc/vmware/secpolicy

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: Parsed all objects

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: Objects defined and obsolete objects removed

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: Parsed all domain names

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: Domains defined and obsolete domains removed

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: Domain policies parsed and syntax validated

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: Constraints check for domain policies succeeded

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: Domain policies set

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: Parsed all the tardisk policy files

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: Set all the tardisk labels and policy

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: Parsed all file label mappings

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: Set all file labels

2012-03-27T08:34:04Z jumpstart: System security policy has been set successfully

2012-03-27T08:34:05Z jumpstart: mount point '/vmfs/volumes/4f4363b2-98987a8f-512a-0026b9096143' not restored, waiting 2 seconds

2012-03-27T08:34:07Z jumpstart: mount point '/vmfs/volumes/4f4363b2-98987a8f-512a-0026b9096143' not restored, waiting 4 seconds

2012-03-27T08:34:11Z jumpstart: mount point '/vmfs/volumes/4f4363b2-98987a8f-512a-0026b9096143' not restored, waiting 8 seconds

2012-03-27T08:34:19Z jumpstart: mount point '/vmfs/volumes/4f4363b2-98987a8f-512a-0026b9096143' not restored, waiting 16 seconds

2012-03-27T08:34:35Z jumpstart: mount point '/vmfs/volumes/4f4363b2-98987a8f-512a-0026b9096143' not restored, waiting 32 seconds

2012-03-27T08:35:07Z jumpstart: mount point '/vmfs/volumes/4f4363b2-98987a8f-512a-0026b9096143' not restored, waiting 64 seconds

2012-03-27T08:36:11Z jumpstart: mount point '/vmfs/volumes/4f4363b2-98987a8f-512a-0026b9096143' not restored before timeout, giving up

2012-03-27T08:36:11Z jumpstart: Scanning 0 VFAT filesystems for scratch storage

2012-03-27T08:36:11Z jumpstart: Scanning 0 VMFS filesystems for scratch storage

2012-03-27T08:36:11Z jumpstart: using /tmp/scratch as /scratch

2012-03-27T08:36:11Z jumpstart: Using /locker/packages/5.0.0/ as /productLocker

2012-03-27T08:36:11Z jumpstart: using /tmp/scratch as /locker

2012-03-27T08:36:11Z jumpstart: unable to open boot configuration: No such file or directory

When I edit the /etc/vmware/esx.conf to set the passthru option back to vmkernel, the file is saved but after reboot the old settings are back again

/device/000:000:26.0/owner = "vmkernel"

/device/000:000:29.0/owner = "vmkernel"

/device/000:000:31.2/device = "3b2f"

/device/000:000:31.2/owner = "passthru"

/device/000:000:31.2/vendor = "8086"

/device/000:000:31.2/vmkname = "vmhba0"

/device/000:009:00.0/vmkname = "vmnic0"

So due to this passthru setting my datastore1 (which only contains ISO's) becomes unavailable and because something unknown I've also lost my datastore2 (which contains 3 VM's).

Anybody has an idea how to solve this ? I'm about to reinstall the whole thing and pray this won't happen again ...