Mounting the same NFS volume in different vCenter Server environments does not result in the same NFS datastore.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article describes a solution to an issue where the UUID of an NFS datastore mounted on a common NFS share across different vCenter servers differs.

This issue occurs when mounting the same NFS datastore under the following conditions:

• The host managed by one vCenter Server is mounted using NFSv3.
• The host managed by another vCenter Server is mounted using NFSv4.1.

In this situation, even if the NFS share is common, the UUIDs will be different.
As a result, when using a virtual machine in a different vCenter, the absolute path to the virtual machine's vmdk file will be different, and the virtual machine may fail to start because the vmdk file cannot be found.
Normally, vmdk configurations located in the same location as the .vmx file only contain the vmdk descriptor file name, not the absolute path.
Only vmdk files located in other directories are affected, and therefore only vmdk files with absolute paths are affected.

The UUID can be checked using the following steps.

1. SSH connection to an ESXi host managed by a vCenter Server
2. Enter the following command:

ls -l /vmfs/volumes/ 
　　 Datastore02 -> db97~~

3. SSH connection to an ESXi host managed by another vCenter Server
4. Enter the following command:

ls -l /vmfs/volumes/ 
　　　Datastore02 -> 7315~~

Environment

・VMware ESXi

・VMware vCenter Server

Cause

If you specify a different NFS version when mounting, the UUID will be different even for the same datastore.

Resolution

The same NFS share must be mounted with the same NFS version.

You cannot mount the same datastore on different hosts using different NFS versions.

When creating and mounting an NFS datastore, you must follow the guidelines in the following documentation.

NFS Datastores

With NFSv3, please ensure that the server name and folder name match.

Additional Information

Japanese Version : 異なる vCenter Server 環境で同じ NFS ボリュームをマウントしても同じ NFS データストアとならない