Datastore Appears Unmounted and Inaccessible on Specific ESXi Host

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Introduction:

• This article addresses an issue where a VMFS datastore appears as "Unmounted," "Not connected," and shows 0 B capacity on a single ESXi host, despite being healthy and accessible on other hosts within the cluster.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 9.x

Cause

• This issue is typically caused by an incomplete Unmount or Detach operation. If an administrator or automation script issues a command to unmount the datastore on a specific host but fails to detach the storage device, the host enters a logical "unmounted" state.
• The host physically detects the storage device during rescans but intentionally blocks access to the VMFS file system because the logical unmounted flag remains active in the configuration.
  
  

/var/log/hostd.log

2026-07-30T10:28:12.798Z -INFO Hostd 2100498 [esx@4413 sub="Libs" opID="125bb9bd-#########" sid="#######" user="vpxuser:###############"] GetVmfsFileSystems: Vmfs umounted volumes from LVM
2026-07-30T10:28:12.835Z -INFO Hostd 2100498 [esx@4413 sub="Libs" opID="125bb9bd-#########" sid="#######" user="vpxuser:###############"] UnresolvedVmfsVolume: deviceName=eui.#######################:1,lvmName=69fd6d08-#######################,label=Datastore-Name(VMFS),fsUuid=69fd6d08-##################
2026-07-30T10:28:12.835Z -INFO Hostd 2100498 [esx@4413 sub="Libs" opID="125bb9bd-#########" sid="#######" user="vpxuser:###############"] GetUnmountedVmfsFileSystems: There are 1 unmounted (NoSnaphot) volumes
2026-07-30T10:28:12.849Z -INFO Hostd 2100498 [esx@4413 sub="Libs" opID="125bb9bd-#########" sid="#######" user="vpxuser:###############"] Refresh: Refreshed unmounted volume /vmfs/volumes/69fd6d08-#######################. Reseting console path
2026-07-30T10:28:12.849Z -INFO Hostd 2100498 [esx@4413 sub="Libs" opID="125bb9bd-#########" sid="#######" user="vpxuser:###############"] GetUnmountedVmfsFileSystemsInt: uuid:69fd6d08-#######################, Label:Datastore-Name(VMFS),logicalDevice:69fd6d08-#######################,headExtent:eui.#######################:1

Resolution

Perform the following steps to re-mount the datastore and resolve the logical state mismatch:

1. Log in to the vCenter Server instance using the vSphere Client.
2. Navigate to the Storage view.
3. Select the affected ESXi host in the inventory.
4. Locate the specific datastore (e.g., ####) that displays as unmounted.
5. Right-click the datastore and select Mount Datastore to Additional Hosts.
6. Select the affected ESXi host from the list and confirm the operation.
7. Verify the datastore connectivity status changes to "Mounted" and "Connected," and that the capacity is correctly reported.

Additional Information

• If the issue persists, verify the storage paths and ensure there are no underlying All Paths Down (APD) or Permanent Device Loss (PDL) conditions.
• For more information on how to retrieve logs, refer to Collecting diagnostic information for VMware ESXi using vSphere Client