Bulk Datastore Unmount from Host Context Menu Affects All vCenter Hosts

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

When navigating to a specific ESXi host in the vSphere Client and selecting multiple datastores from the Datastores tab to unmount, the datastores are unexpectedly unmounted from all connected ESXi hosts across the entire vCenter Server inventory. This occurs despite the action being initiated from the context of a single isolated host. The UI displays the warning prompt: "Unmount the selected datastores from all hosts?"

Cause

The vSphere Client UI design utilizes the left-hand inventory tree strictly as a navigation and filtering mechanism, not to scope execution targets. When multiple datastores are selected, a uniform list of hosts cannot be generated due to varying connection states. Consequently, bulk datastore unmount actions default to applying to all connected hosts in the vCenter Server inventory, regardless of the currently selected inventory object.

Resolution

To safely unmount datastores from a single specific ESXi host, perform the unmount action on one datastore at a time:

1. Navigate to the target ESXi host in the vSphere Client inventory tree.
2. Select the Datastores tab.
3. Select a single datastore. Do not use bulk selection.
4. Click Unmount.
5. In the resulting host-selection dialog box, explicitly select the single target ESXi host you wish to unmount the datastore from.
6. Confirm the unmount action.
7. Repeat this process individually for any remaining datastores.

Additional Information

To reduce misinterpretation of the execution scope, the confirmation dialog for bulk unmount actions will be updated in a future release to explicitly state: "The selected datastores will be unmounted from ALL connected ESXi hosts in the vCenter inventory."