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leo_freeman
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After ESXi Upgrade VM storage Lost

I have had a working ESXi 3.5.0 host with several VMs for several months now.

Today I checked VMware Infrastructure Update and it showed that Firmware, VM Tools

and Infrastructure Client updates were available. I told it to do the updates and

that completed without incident. Following the update,

VMware Infrastructure Client connected and everything was normal - all VMs were running.

The Update had indicated that a server reboot was necessary, so I used VI Client to

reboot the server (VMware ESX Sertver 3i, 3.5.0, 123629).

Reconnecting VI Client after the reboot showed the message

"The VMware ESX Server does not have persistent storage" and all my VMs are gone.

Under the vmhost -> Configuration -> Storage Adapters tab I see my two 250GB sata

disks vmhba1 and vmhba100. The hardware is a Dell PowerEdge 840 with two disks.

The vmhost -> Configuration -> Storage tab is blank and that is where I used to see my

VM datastore.

Rescan from VI Client does nothing. SSH to the VM host and doing esxcfg-rescan vmhba1

results in the message "vmhba1 does not support rescanning".

fdisk -l shows the VMFS filesystems on the disks:

~ # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/disks/vmhba100:0:0:0: 250.0 GB, 250000000000 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30394 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/disks/vmhba100:0:0:1 1 30395 244140593+ fb VMFS

Disk /dev/disks/vmhba1:0:0:0: 250.0 GB, 250000000000 bytes

64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 238418 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/disks/vmhba1:0:0:1 5 750 763904 5 Extended

/dev/disks/vmhba1:0:0:2 751 4845 4193280 6 FAT16

/dev/disks/vmhba1:0:0:3 4846 238419 239179345 fb VMFS

/dev/disks/vmhba1:0:0:4 * 1 4 4080 4 FAT16 <32M

/dev/disks/vmhba1:0:0:5 5 52 49136 6 FAT16

/dev/disks/vmhba1:0:0:6 53 100 49136 6 FAT16

/dev/disks/vmhba1:0:0:7 101 210 112624 fc VMKcore

/dev/disks/vmhba1:0:0:8 211 750 552944 6 FAT16

Partition table entries are not in disk order

fstab shows:

~ # cat /etc/fstab

none /proc procfs defaults 0 0

none /vmfs/volumes vcfs defaults 0 0

none /tmp visorfs 2,128,tmp 0 0

So - How do I gather up my marbles and get this thing functioning again?

The disks seem to be there, but ESXi is not mounting them.

I am looking for a clean recovery procedure before I try a bull-in-the-china-shop

hack job. I really really do not want to lose my VMs.

Thanks, Leo

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1 Solution

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Jasemccarty
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What type of hardware are you using?

From what I see below, your VMFS volume is intact.

You might want to try this:

1. Go to the configuration tab in the VI Client

2. Choose Advanced Settings

3. Under LVM, set LVM.EnableResignature to 1 (not the default of 0)

4. Rescan your local storage controller

5. You should see your datatore. It may have a different "friendly name" but the rest stay the same.

Does that help?

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

Jase McCarty - @jasemccarty

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Jasemccarty
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What type of hardware are you using?

From what I see below, your VMFS volume is intact.

You might want to try this:

1. Go to the configuration tab in the VI Client

2. Choose Advanced Settings

3. Under LVM, set LVM.EnableResignature to 1 (not the default of 0)

4. Rescan your local storage controller

5. You should see your datatore. It may have a different "friendly name" but the rest stay the same.

Does that help?

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

Jase McCarty - @jasemccarty
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leo_freeman
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They came back. The VM files are there.

I guess that I now need to get them back into the inventory...

Thank you very much, Leo

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Jasemccarty
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Glad to help.

Funny thing is... I had the same problem a few minutes ago. It took me a little bit to figure it out.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

Jase McCarty - @jasemccarty
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helloyello
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Jase, you saved me!

Thanks so much - I experienced the same after upgrading from 3.5 update 3 to update 4

Why doesn't VMWare recoginze this as an issue and solve it properly? It seems that quite a few people are having the same problem!

Roland

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microkid
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It seems VMware changed the way ESXi sees the SATA bus, which causes a change in the naming of the vmhba device numbers, ergo the datastore can't be found anymore. I agree the upgrade should foresee that and make sure the new naming doesn't cause any problems. Maybe in U5? Smiley Happy

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Dave_Mishchenko
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The changes with ICH drivers are meant to improve host CD-ROM support. And VMFS is not supported on ICH controllers (but is certainly nice that it works) - http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1008673&sl... 0 17505919

Details

After upgrading to ESX 3.5 Update 3, the ESX host may not be able to recognize local VMFS volumes. Virtual machines located on the local VMFS volumes will be inaccessible.

Solution

This occurs on server hardware ICH-7 SATA Controllers configured in ATA mode. If the controller’s BIOS setting is changed to SATA/AHCI mode, the ESX host may be able to re-recognize the local VMFS volumes. Once this change is made, the ESX host will need to be booted to see a new hardware configuration. Another additional reboot will be required to see the VMFS volumes.

Note: This controller is supported with SATA CD/DVD drives in IDE/ATA mode only. SATA CD/DVD drives connected in SATA/AHCI mode will not be available to virtual machines.

Please note: The ICH-7 SATA Controller does not support storing VMFS datastores. The above steps is provided to help recover and migrate the virtual machine onto a supported configuration. For complete list of supported I/O devices please see our compatibility guide at: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_io_guide.pdf

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SchulieBug
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I've just tried to upgrade from ESXi 3.5 to ESXi 4.0 and suddenly there's a Panic and after repairing the store is lost! Is there a way to recover the store form ESXi 4.0, otherwise we have to reïnstall a few servers Smiley Sad

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nalinu
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Hi All,

I have had a similar problem and my VMs are lost. I ran the Esxi 3.5 version 4 update. The console showed a Panic: message and I had no other option but to try to then install ESXi 4.0 thinking that may solve the issue but now VM are gone.

I think There is one still not touched but the most important VM seems to be gone.

It looks like the vmfs-undelete tools are not available to Esxi customers and now we are stuffed. Hands up I should have had a backup of this machine.

Is there any help around for this issue ? Thanks in advance for any advice to prgoress this matter.

Nalin.

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Dave_Mishchenko
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What sort of hardware are you using? If you access the console can you still see the disks with fdisk -l?

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nalinu
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Hi Dave,

First thanks for taking time to respond.

I can see the disks if I do a fdisk -l. All this is installed on HP XW6600 workstation with two xeon quad core processors but local storage ( sata).

Regards

Nalin.

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