VMFS volume is mounted on one or more hosts and not visible to others

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vSphere ESX 8.x
• VMware vSphere ESX 7.x
• VMware vSphere ESX 6.x
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms: 

• You have an existing datastore already mounted to one or more hosts that is not visible on other hosts.
• The related storage LUN is not visible in the Name and Device Selection screen when attempting to add it as a new datastore (Right-click host -> Storage -> Add Storage):

 

• When you rescan storage (Right-click on the host -> Storage > Rescan Storage ) and retry adding the storage again, as above, it still does not show the LUN in the Name and device selection section.
• From an ssh session on the host you see that the LUN is detected as a snapshot LUN, but the Can resignature flag is set to false:

Environment

• vSphere ESXi (all versions)

Cause

• The volume was force mounted to one or more of the hosts. 

 

Verification:

• Follow steps in the following KB article to identify if the volume is force mounted: Identify if a datastore is force mounted on an ESXi host

Resolution

• Please perform the following steps:
  
  • Storage Migrate (sVmotion or Cold migration)  -or-  shutdown and unregister any registered virtual machines on the affected datastore, if any. 
  • Unmount to volume from from all hosts
    •  In the Inventories section -> Choose Storage Tab -> Right-click Datastore -> Unmount Datastore -> Choose hosts to unmount from
  • Resignature the datastore from san ssh session:
    • See KB: Troubleshooting LUNs detected as snapshot LUNs in vSphere
      
      
• CAUTION:  If all of the symptoms in the Issue/Introduction above match your symptoms (including the output from the esxcli vmfs snapshot list command), but you are unable to verify that the datastore is force mounted, this could indicate other issues, including volume corruption. Proceed with caution and ensure you have good backups.  Please contact Broadcom Support for further assistance.