VMFS local datastore is not accessible, VMs unusable
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VMFS local datastore is not accessible, VMs unusable

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Article ID: 394807

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Updated On: 04-25-2025

Products

VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Local VMFS datastore shows 0 capacity and free space

VMs are unusable

The datastore can't be browsed via vCenter Web Client or ESXi CLI

Any commands run to interact with the datastore results in errors "No such device" or "No such file or directory"

The same is seen with the VMFS-L datastore as well were the host logs are stored

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi (All Versions)

Cause

This is caused due to H:0x5 - Aborts, timeouts, and stuck I/O encountered by the datastores resulting in the datastores unusable. 

Resolution

To confirm datastores are suffering from aborts, timeouts & stuck I/O and you have no access to the host logs do the following.

  1. Access the host DCUI either by an SSH session or the hosts KVM Utility 
  2. Use ALT+F12 to display the active vmkernel log
  3. If you can't access the vmkernel log via the DCUI you can run dmesg to access the active messages in memory which is also vmkernel
  4. If excessive aborts and timeouts are seen then the datastores are effectively unusable
  5. Place the host into maintenance mode and reboot the host
  6. If the host fails to enter maintenance mode do a cold reboot

Datastore functionality and logging will be restored upon reboot