vmfs3 datastore not recognized in ESXi 5

[Garfied]

Hello,

i am working on migration between two farm but i got a problem. If i try to expose vmfs3 datastore to esxi 5 it is not recognized.

If i try to add storage i see the lun but system recognize it as blank and try to format!

Any suggestion?

regards,

Enrico

[LennieDH]

I think you should investigate about datastore migration, at what level did you performed it? Did you migrated LUNs between storage arrays?

Next step is to investigate how datastore is seen by ESXi host:

Run:

partedUtil getptbl  /vmfs/devices/disk/naa.xyz

where "naa.xyz" is your VMFS3 datastore

If it is correctly seen as a VMFS3 you should see something similar to:

msdos
65270 255 63 1048576000
1 128 1048562549 251 0

where:

msdos is partitioning scheme used by VMFS3

128 is starting sector for VMFS3

Regards,

Paolo

[Garfied]

Hi,

the storage array is the same. On its management console i declared the lun to be visible to the new farm esxi 5.

Regards,

Enrico

[aaronwsmith]

Make sure the vmfs3 module is running on your host.

Run this command to make sure the vmfs3 vmkernel module is loaded.

# esxcli system module get -m vmfs3

You should get output similar to the following, which would confirm the host has it loaded:

Module: vmfs3

Module File: /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmfs3

License: VMware

Version: Version VMFS-D:14.58, VMFS-L:14.56, Built on: Aug  1 2012

Signed Status: VMware Signed

Signature Issuer: VMware, Inc.

Signature Digest: ...

Signature FingerPrint: ...

Provided Namespaces: ...

Required Namespaces: ...

If not loaded, run this command to try loading it manually (might want to put host in maintenance mode beforehand.)

# esxcli system module load -m vmfs3

Also check how the storage device claim rules and see if your LUN is getting claimed by something other than the NMP plugin:

# esxcli storage core claimrule list

Failing all that, try rebooting your host now that it can see the LUN and see if it will then recognize the VMFS3 datastore.