ESXi 4.1 host not recognising existing VMFS datastore

Posted by Graeme Donaldson on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Graeme Donaldson
Published on 2010-10-05T11:56:32Z Indexed on 2010/12/29 7:55 UTC
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Existing setup:

  • host1 and host2, ESX 4.0, 2 HBAs each.
  • lun1 and lun2, 2 LUNs belonging to the same RAID set (my terminology might be sketchy here).

This has been working just fine all along.

I added host3, ESXi 4.1, 2 HBAs.

If I view Configuration / Storage Adapters, I can see that both HBAs see both LUNs, but if I view Configuration / Storage, I only see 1 datastore. host1/2 can see both LUNs and I have VMs running on both too.

I have rescanned, refreshed and even rebooted, but host3 refuses to acknowledge 1 of the datastores.

Does anyone know what's going on?

Update:

I re-installed the host with ESX (not i) 4.0, same version as the existing hosts and it's still not recognising the vmfs. I think I'm going to SVmotion everything off that datastore then format it.

Update2:

I've created the LUN from scratch and the problem gets even weirder. I've presented the LUN to all 3 hosts, and I can see the LUN in the vSphere client's Configuration / Storage Adapters section on all 3 hosts.

  • If I create a datastore on the LUN via the Configuration / Storage section on host1, it works fine and I can create an empty folder via datastore browser, but the datastore is not seen by the host2 and host3.
  • I can use the Add Storage wizard on host2 and it will see the LUN. At this point the "VMFS Label" column has the label I gave with "(head)" appended.
  • If I try the Add Storage wizard's "Keep the existing signature" option, it fails with an error "Cannot change the host configuration." and a dialog box that says 'Call "HostStorageSystem.ResolveMultipleUnresolvedVmfsVolumes" for object "storageSystem-17" on vCenter Server "vcenter.company.local" failed.'
  • If I try the Add Storage wizard's "Assign a new signature" option on host2, it will complete and the VMFS label will have "snap-(hexnumber)-" prepended. At this point its also visible on host3, but not host1.

I have a similar setup in a different datacenter which didn't give me all this trouble.

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