Datastore name displays in red on the ESXi host CLI

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• When you run the # ls -l /vmfs/volumes/command, one or more of the datastore names appear in red text.
• For example:
  
  # ls -l /vmfs/volumes/
  
  drwxr-xr-t 1 root root 1260 Apr 19 01:38 4b97a503-e51cb1f8-32e8-00505603006d
  lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35 Jun 11 03:35 Storage1 -> 4b97a503-e51cb1f8-32e8-00505603006d

Resolution

A datastore's name (for example, Storage1) is a symbolic link to the UUID datastore name (for example, 4b97a503-e51cb1f8-32e8-00505603006d) .

 

This issue occurs if a symbolic link is broken. The symbolic link can be broken if:

• The UUID of the datastore has changed. For more information, see:
• • vSphere handling of LUNs detected as snapshot LUNs (1011387)
  • Snapshot LUN detection in ESX and ESXi (1011385)
     
• The datastore is not removed correctly. That is, if the destination datastore is no longer there but the link is.
• The datastore failed to mount or is temporarily unavailable. Try to rescan, and check the vmkernel log for issues. For more information, see Location of ESX log files (1021800).

Note: This issue can indicate that a datastore is missing. If you are not missing a datastore, you can remove the symbolic link with the command # rm link_to_destination. Removing a symbolic link has no effect on the destination of the link.

Additional Information

Snapshot LUN detection in ESX and ESXi
vSphere handling of LUNs detected as snapshot LUNs