Error: VMFS volume OSDATA has been detected corrupted ESXi

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0
• VMware Telco Cloud Platform

Issue/Introduction

ESXi Upgrade from 7.x to 8.x fails and Datastores appear missing or inaccessible after upgrade."

Symptoms:

1. ESXi 7.x or later detects metadata corruption within the OSDATA VMFS-L volume.
   
   
2. To investigate the corruption, a VOMA check can be executed against the OSDATA VMFS-L partition, or a VOMA dump can be collected.
   
   

Identification & Execution:

1. Identify the OSDATA device and partition number by running the following command:
   
   

   # esxcfg-scsidevs -m | grep OSDATA

   
   
   
2. Execute the VOMA check or dump using the syntax below:
   
   

   # voma -m vmfs -f check -d /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.################:#
   
   # voma -m vmfs -f dump -d /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.################:#

    

Validation:

1. The corruption is confirmed via the ESXi `/var/log/vmkernel.log` file with the following entry:
   
   

   ####-##-##T##:##:##.###Z Wa(###) vmkwarning: cpu##:######)WARNING: FS3: ###: VMFS volume OSDATA-########-##########-####-################/########-##########-####-################ on naa.#############################:# has been detected corrupted

Environment

VMware ESXi: 7.x, 8.x

Telco Cloud Platform: 5.1

Telco Cloud Infrastructure: 2.2

Cause

The VMFS volume metadata has become corrupted, or the underlying backing LUN is unavailable, rendering the datastore entirely inaccessible to the ESXi host.

Resolution

The solution is to reinstall the ESXi host. This process will recreate the OSDATA partition, which cannot be rebuilt without a full reinstallation.

Important Note: Running VOMA fix or advfix against the OSDATA VMFS-L partition is unsupported. Attempting to do so will fail with the following error: ERROR: Device Failed to close. Read-only file system

Additional Information

1. For detailed instructions on using VOMA, refer to: Using vSphere On-disk Metadata Analyzer (VOMA) to check VMFS metadata consistency
   
   

2. The ESX-OSDATA partition is a critical component of the ESXi installation. For additional context, see: About the Scratch Partition

3. Targeted to be fixed in a future release. Please subscribe to this article and KB 275360 for updates on fix releases.