After upgrade of ESXi host to 8.x from 7.x, the VMFS datastore on the local hard disk is no longer in the host's datastore inventory

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

After upgrading from ESXi 7.x to 8.x, hosts are found to be missing a VMFS datastore on the local disk.

Environment

• VMWare ESXi 7.x
• VMWare ESXi 8.x

Cause

Upgrade of ESXi caused the local VMFS datastore to become unmounted.

Resolution

Reattach the VMFS datastore by performing the following:

1. SSH into the host with root user
2. Use the following command to list all volumes which have been detected as snapshots or replica volumes:

   esxcfg-volume -l

   

   The output should show in the VMFS UUID/label of the missing datastore: #########-#####-####-########/<VMFS volume label name>
3. Note the label name for the missing device and run this command to mount the drive persistently:
   

   esxcfg-volume -M <VMFSVolumeLabel>