missing datasore

[gravetye]

Guys go easy on me, I'm an Avaya UC engineer trying to learn some vmware skills, I've got my VCA-DCV6 and that's about my level at the moment!

I've built a home lab, ESXi 5.5 with a range of Windows and Avaya servers. This lab was going well, all the servers running, configured nicely even had handsets working, Then today its all gone wrong.

Essentially I can log into the ESXi host using vSphere however all my VM's are turned off, the status is Unknown (inaccessible). The ESXi error suggests I have no data-store configured. I have one 500GB SCSI HDD internal to my server. When I do a rescan on my datastores / devises nothing shows up, if I try to add a new datastore nothing shows up. Ive run some rudimentary cli commands to establish whats going on but my response back is there are not datastores / storage devices.

I've no idea what event has occurred, I cant see online anything that looks like this issue, some similar issues that I've tried to hijack the solution but have come up short.

I guess my question firstly, is there an easy fix to resolve this, and secondly if I use WinSCP or such like what directories can I grab that I can then restore onto a fresh ESXi deployment so as to recover my work?

I've spent a few months building this lab so Id be gutted to start again (although experience is the silver lining). Backing up was the next task on my list of areas to cover off but this occurred before I could complete the task!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Daniel

[gravetye]

What folders should I copy before I flatten this ESXi host? Or isn't it that simple to backup / restore?

Cheers

[gravetye]

68 views, nothing, no suggestions? Is this posted in the wrong forum?

[gravetye · Accepted solution]

Tough crowd

Well for anyone starting out like me who finds themselves in this situation here is the fix that worked for me.

First check the integrity of your HDD, there are countless tools to do this, no doubt in built VMware tools but I booted from a CD and carried out the task that way. No issue with my HDD.

So I reinstalled ESXi and selected the option to reinstall ESXi whilst retaining the data store (so it was there after all and for whatever reason had become invisible to my ESXi host). Once this was carried out and ESXi configured with the same details as the original version I was able to reconnect to my ESXi host and also I could see my data store. Browsed my data store and thankfully all my VM’s were still there. The VM’s were not listed in my inventory so open each VM folder, you'll see a .vmx file, right click it, add to inventory.

I’m back up and running now.

Installed Veeam and have backed up and set a schedule for continuous backups.

Thanks to the hundreds of people who viewed this post and offered not a single word of help. I hope this helps someone STARTING OUT like me. :smileydevil: