Recreating a missing VMFS datastore partition table

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

The partition table is required only during a rescan. This means that the datastore may become inaccessible on a host during a rescan if the VMFS partition was deleted after the last rescan. The partition table is physically located on the LUN, so all vSphere hosts that have access to this LUN can see the change has taken place. However, only the hosts that do a rescan will be affected.

You might see the following symptoms:

• A datastore has become inaccessible.
• A VMFS partition table is missing.
• The output of the partedUtil command against the device in question gives the below output similar to:
  
  partedUtil getptbl /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.################################
  
  gpt
  52216 255 63 838860800
   
• The output for a regular working VMFS datastore instance would be as follows: 
  
  gpt
  52216 255 63 838860800
  1 2048 838850039 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 vmfs 0

Environment

6.x

7.x

8.x.

Cause

This issue occurs because the VMFS partition can be deleted by deleting the datastore from the vSphere Client. This is prevented by the software, if the datastore is in use.

Note: It can also happen if a physical server has access to the LUN on the SAN and does an install, for example.

Resolution

Please engage Broadcom support by opening an SR to help and see if the partition table can be fixed.

Additional Information