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naltoidaddict
Contributor
Contributor

.vmdk not recognized in "browse datastores"

I had a problem with a suse 10 guest not backing up. Looking around I found that someone had created the guest with the boot drive on one direct attached datastore and the data disk on on an nfs datastore. To simplify stuff I removed the vm from inventory and moved the disks to the same data store. But when I create a new guest vm and try to attach the disk to it the "browse datastores" doesn't see any files in the folder. I'm stumped at what's happening here.

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vmroyale
Immortal
Immortal

Hello. How did you move the disks?

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com
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naltoidaddict
Contributor
Contributor

I removed the guest from inventory, putty'd into the esx server and did a "mv" to the other datastore.

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pgergen
Contributor
Contributor

I am having the same problem. I hae a new SAN, and am trying to move the files from one datastore to another. I have 2 disks is two different data stores. I moved one sucessfully, and the other one errored out. I moved the first one back to it's original location and then tried to start the VM, but then got the error "file not found". I then tried to create a new vm, with the original vmdk files, and it can't find the second vmdk file when trying to add it. When I browse the datastore, there is one file, servername_data-flat.vmdk. That was the only file in the datastore when I tried to move it originally.

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vmroyale
Immortal
Immortal

Have you tried refreshing the view in the datastore browser?

Have you tried refreshing the actual datastore? ESX Host -> Summary Tab -> Datastore -> Right-click on datastore and refresh

Also - Why are you creating a new virtual machine, as opposed to cleaning up the .VMX file? Just curious.

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com
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pgergen
Contributor
Contributor

My answers are in Red.

Have you tried refreshing the view in the datastore browser?

Yes, it shows up fine in the datastore browser, I just don't see it when trying to add a disk from existing virtual disk

Have you tried refreshing the actual datastore? ESX Host -> Summary Tab -> Datastore -> Right-click on datastore and refresh

Yes.

Also - Why are you creating a new virtual machine, as opposed to cleaning up the .VMX file? Just curious.

Just trying to get it working any way that I thought of. How can I clean up the original .vmx file? I don't know how to do that.

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vmroyale
Immortal
Immortal

Hello pgergen - my reply should have been in response to the original poster. I clicked the wrong button!

Would you mind starting a new discussion for your question, as it is somewhat different in that you had an error condition in the copy. This will keep the original discussion here from getting too confusing, and you will probably get better and/or more responses with a new discussion.

Thank you.

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com
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naltoidaddict
Contributor
Contributor

Have you tried refreshing the view in the datastore browser?

Yes.

+Have you tried

refreshing the actual datastore? ESX Host -> Summary Tab ->

Datastore -> Right-click on datastore and refresh+

Tried that as well (odd that it shows up when browsing to it normally but when I do it as "add an existing disk" as part of a new vm setup it's not showing)

Also - Why are you creating a new virtual machine, as opposed to cleaning up the .VMX file? Just curious.

Originally we were just trying to clean this vm up and get both disks on the same datashare. I did this manually instead of using vmkfstools (which I now know is a mistake) and it appears I got it into a pretty messed up state. I thought it would be easier to just dump the disks in one folder and create a new vm to attach to it.

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jjahns
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I'm having the same exact issue in 4.1.  I had to modify the vmx file to take care of an internal asthetic and now the vmx isn't recognized by vmware within the browse datastore section.  This is a real problem since everything in the vmx is valid.

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

post it so we can check if it is really valid  Smiley Wink


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Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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