The ESX/ESXi host does not have persistent storage

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

When connecting to the ESX/ESXi host using the VMware Infrastructure/vSphere Client or adding the host to the VirtualCenter/vCenter inventory, the following message is displayed:

The VMware ESX Server does not have persistent storage

Environment

VMware ESXi 3.5.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Embedded
VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded

Cause

This message is generated when an ESX/ESXi host does not have a VMFS datastore. If this message is observed after installation, the host may not have been able to create a VMFS volume due to an underlying storage problem, or storage device incompatibility with the VMFS filesystem.

Note: When installing ESXi on USB storage, this is expected as a VMFS volume cannot be created on USB storage.

Resolution

The message clears when a VMFS datastore is created.

For more information on creating a VMFS datastore, see the ESX Server Configuration Guide for your version of ESX/ESXi.

Additional Information

Creating a local VMFS volume generates the error: Error during the configuration of the host: Failed to update the disk partition information
Manually creating a VMFS volume using vmkfstools -C
Unable to add a deleted local datastore back to the ESXi 5.0 host