Unable to migrate templates to new datastores

Products

• VMware vSphere ESX 8.x

Issue/Introduction

• When moving a template to a new datastore, the process requires a temporary conversion to a Virtual Machine. While attempting to convert a template to a VM, the following error occurs:
  
  File /vmfs/volumes/<datastoreUUID>/<VM_Name>/VM_Name-000001.vmdk was not found
  
  
• The vCenter Server inventory displays the source datastore as mounted but from the ESXi host, the datastore appears with 0 bytes

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.X

Cause

The source datastore containing the template is not mounted to the target ESXi host or the datastores were previously mounted and recently unmounted, but a Storage Rescan was not performed on the target host to refresh the inventory.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, the following steps should be taken:

• Mount the Datastore: Ensure the source datastore is properly presented and mounted to the target ESXi host.
  
  
• Perform storage rescan
  
  
• Register the VM: Convert the template into a virtual machine
  
  
• Migrate: Perform a Storage vMotion to move the VM to the desired new datastore
  
  
• Once the migration is complete, convert the VM back into a Template