Post storage maintenance, certain previously connected ESXi hosts fail to display the datastore.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0

Issue/Introduction

Symptom:

After storage maintenance, some of the ESXi hosts that were previously connected to the storage do not show the datastore, and the backing device for the datastore shows as "Not consumed.".

Some ESXi hosts show the datastore without any issue.

When the user runs the command "df -h" to list the datastore from the ESXi CLI where the datastore is not visible, they get the following message.

[root@esxi:~] df -h
VmFileSystem: Slow refresh failed: Unable to get FS Attrs for /vmfs/volumes/66cxxxx-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxx
Error when running esxcli, return status was: 1
Errors:
Error getting data for filesystem on '/vmfs/volumes/66cxxxxx-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxx': Unable to get FS Attrs for /vmfs/volumes/66cxxxxx-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxx, skipping.

Where "66cxxxx-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxx" is the UUID of the concerned datastore which is not showing on the concerned ESXI host.

The user can see the backing extent and can also get the partition information from the concerned ESXi host from the UI.

The issue persist even after the user rescan the storage from the ESXi host and from the cluster level as well.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x

Cause

Sometimes, a backing device of the datastore may appear "not consumed" due to temporary glitches in the ESXi host's memory, network connections, or file system inconsistencies, which an ESXi host reboot can potentially clear up.

Resolution

• Perform a storage rescan first, Check the following KB on how to perform rescan of the storage on an ESXi host.
  Performing a rescan of the storage on an ESXi host
  
  
• If the storage rescan does not work, then reboot the ESXi host.