ESXi host displays an error and fails to boot when two ESXi installations are on the same system

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

When two ESXi installations are available on the same system, you experience these symptoms:

• The ESXi host fails to boot
• You see the error:
  
  Two filesystems with the same UUID have been detected. Make sure you do not have two ESXi installations
   
• This issue occurs when ESXi is installed on both the local hard disk drive and a USB drive

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0

Resolution

To resolve this issue:

1. Restart the system.
2. During the reboot, when the hypervisor screen appears, press Shift+O.
3. In the boot option, type overrideDuplicateImageDetection and press Enter.

After the system starts, use any one of these methods to remove the duplicate ESXi installation:

• Identify the drive on which you want to remove the ESXi installation, and run this command from the console:
  
  # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disks/mpx.vmhba1\:C0\:T0\:L0 bs=1m conv=notrunc
  
  For more information, see Identifying disks when working with VMware ESX (1014953).
   
• Initialize the disk from the BIOS of the SCSI controller, if available.
   
• Install other guest operating systems on the disk that contains the duplicate installation of ESXi.
   
• Use the vSphere Client to add the datastore to another ESXi/ESX host and format the disk (volume) that contains the duplicate installation.

Additional Information

For translated versions of this article, see:

• 日本語: 2 つの ESXi が同一システム上にインストールされているとき、ESXi ホストにエラーが表示され起動に失敗する (2088619)
• 简体中文: 当两个 ESXi 安装在同一系统中时，ESXi 主机显示错误，并且无法引导 (2102514)