VC 2.0.2 shows wrong amount of free space in a datastore

[Steve_Forbes1]

I have a 3 server cluster running ESX 3.0.1 with VC 2.0.2 (recently upgraded from 2.0.1). There are 3 datastores per machine, 1 on local disk and 2 SAN based datastores. The SAN based datastores are available on each ESX server.

If I do a vdf -h on any of my ESX servers, I get the free space for my SAN based datastores, called SAN-1 and SAN-2. The space free on SAN-1 from the ESX server ties in with the free space that the VC shows for this datastore. However, a vdf -h on SAN-2 shows it has 331GB of free space whereas VC shows that it has no free space. If I try to refresh the view for the storage in the VC I get an error "Timed out waiting on server response". This is follwed by another error "Object reference not set to an instance of an object".

I'm a little lost as to why this is happening or how to fix it. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.

[troberts · Accepted solution]

If you use the VI3 client to connect directly to the ESX server (not the VirtualCenter server), do you see the correct space?

If so try starting the management agent on the ESX server.

1. ssh in to the esx server

root@your_server root# service mgmt-vmware restart

Stopping VMware ESX Server Management services:

VMware ESX Server Host Agent Watchdog OK

VMware ESX Server Host Agent OK

Starting VMware ESX Server Management services:

VMware ESX Server Host Agent (background) OK

Availability report startup (background) OK

root@your_server root# service vmware-vpxa restart

Stopping vmware-vpxa: OK

Starting vmware-vpxa: OK

2. log back into VC and do a refresh on the storage.

[Steve_Forbes1]

When logged into the ESX server with VI3, I do see the correct amount of space.

Does the restart of the "mgmt-vmware" and "vmware-vpxa" have an impact on the running VM's?

Thanks

[Steve_Forbes1]

This actually answers my question;

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=7301769&sl...

[troberts]

Issuing the mgmt-vmware restart command on the ESX Server 3.0.1 service console can unexpectedly reboot virtual machines if patch release 7557441 is not installed. See http://www.vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/esx-7557441-patch.html.

This issue appears in virtual machines that are configured to automatically start or automatically shut down.

[MrBunjit]

I had a similar problem with a datastore in VC 2.0.2 showing as 249GB free out of 250GB even though 4 vPCs (8GB each) were on it. When connecting directly, one of the two ESX 3.0.2 servers showed 215GB free, the other showed 249GB.

To fix it I did an iSCSI rescan on the server showing 249GB and then both servers and VC showed the correct value of 215GB free.

HTH...