Removing VMFS datastore information

[tomaddox]

Following a change in our SAN configuration, one of my ESX servers is apparently seeing all of its old VMFS datastores as snapshots. After reading similar posts on the subject, I do not want to either resignature the datastores, as I would have to reregister over 80 VMs, or disable snapshot LUN recognition, on the grounds that we may one day want to implement that with a NetApp. What I would like to do instead is simply blow away whatever configuration info that is causing the server to see the LUNs as snapshots instead of as its old LUNs. Unfortunately, I'm not sure where this configuration resides. Can anyone help me with this? If not, the next step is to reinstall ESX Server on that box, which I don't mind, per se, but it seems an inelegant solution.

[christianZ]

When there aren't any running vms on this host you can shutdown and disconnect it from san then reboot and remove all the vmfs volumes from it.

After the next shutdown you connect it to the san again and restart it. That should work.

[tomaddox]

Removing all the VMFS volumes is a non-issue, since the host doesn't recognize them. I removed the ESX server's HBAs from the host group on the SAN and rescanned them from the VI client. Sure enough, the ESX server saw no LUNs. I rebooted, then added the HBAs to the host group again, rescanned, saw nothing, then rebooted again. Once again, the ESX server sees the LUNs but not the VMFS filesystems.