[not solved] Was booting esxi from USB key, but key is broken, how to recover?

[XavierH]

Hello everyone,

I have installed a vmware esxi 3.5 host that is booting using a USB key.

My problem is that the key has been broken.

I did reinstall a new key with the same esxi 3.5 version and assigned the same IP to the host.

What steps do I have to follow to have my guest up and running again?

Thanks a lot for your help.

[PduPreez]

If you log into the New ESXi host with the Vmware Client, you should still see all the Datastores.

You will need to browse all datastores, and in each VMFS folder you need to right click the *.vmx file and select add to inventory.

Once they are added you can just poer them up, you might get a VM Question and need to Answer that they were move.

What I would do is make an Image of the USB Key once you added all your VM, then in future just flash the new USB with the image and off you go.

Depends on how often the VM change though.

Winimage works well

Regards

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[XavierH]

Hello, Thanks a lot for your answer,

the problem is that there is currently no datastore detected on the VM host.

If I want to add one, the disks are detected and it sees the VMFS partitions but it sasy that if I add the datastore, "the current disk layout will be destroyed. All file systems and data will be lost permanently."

Any idea?

[PduPreez · Accepted solution]

That is not good

Are you sure your storage is not the original problem?

If you boot from USB, and the key fails, ESXi will keep running until you reboot the Box. The ESXi runs in RAM

If your storage is 100% you can try the following

From Advanced settings under configuration if I remember correct:

Change enableResignature to 0

Change disallowSnapshotLun to 0 as well.

Perform a rescan from storage adapter at least 2 times

Change the Values back to 1 if it works

Regards

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[XavierH]

THANKS A LOT!!!

For your quick answers and for the quality of your answers!!!

I really appreciate. Thanks...

[PduPreez]

Always happy to help