VMWare - Not Consumed Datastore

Tech Tips - By Vincent Chan

Sometime when you doing the rebuild or replace or add another new ESX Host, VMWare vCenter ESX Cluster may show iSCSI Datastore as Not Consumed after you have completed to do the iSCSI or Fibre Channel storage configuration. Normally it manage to connect only 1 datastore instead of remaining datastore.

Normally people will keep do the Storage Rescan on the Datastore Configuration but still remain same challenges. In this situation you may need to do the command line way to provision the cluster LUN up and running. Below is the simple step.

On your Challenge ESX Host, do start the SSH Services ( Configure > Services > SSH) and login the Challenge ESX Host via SSH Services like example Putty. Login the Challenge ESX Host and key in the command line as below :-

esxcfg-volume -l

This command line will scan and show all the Not Consumed Storage is it already been Registered or Storage Signature exits in the VMWare Cluster Server.



If the command line have list out the Not Consumed LUN, you need to check is it the Can Mount Status is Yes. This mean it is safe to mount into the Challenge ESX Host. Next you need to capture the VMFS UUID of the LUN you want to mount.

Example :-
VMFS UUID/label: 615427d4-d9698a7c-b2b5-e4434bdbc68c/NSLUNBRONZE01

The VMFS UUID is 615427d4-d9698a7c-b2b5-e4434bdbc68c

Than you need to key in the command line as below to persistent mount the specified not consumed LUN to the Challenge ESX Host :-

esxcfg-volume -M 615427d4-d9698a7c-b2b5-e4434bdbc68c



One the Persistent Mounting completed. You will manage to see the Not Consumed LUN appeared at the Challenge ESX Host Datastores. Keep continue and execute the remaining Not Consumed LUN. Hope this help.