Hi...
I am having troubles after reinstalling ESX, version 5.1 over 4.1, as a means to upgrade to 5.1, while preserving the datastore. After the reinstall was successfull and I have updated all the settings that are typically lost after a reinstall, I cannot start the VMs in the local datastore to the server. Previous to the upgrade we used Extents to expand the datastore's storage after we added more disk drives to the server. I've done my research on the errors I get from the VM's starting and the other errors Ive seen some times when browsing the datastore and it looses connection, all points to the datastore being corrupt or out of sync with the physical data on the disk.
When I run the following command "vmkfstools -P <datastore>" I get the message about the "(One or more partitions spanned by this volume may be offline)" which supports my theory and research.
When I view the Storage in vSphere Client for the server, I see that under the Extents, the "Total Formatted Capacity" = 1.91 TB, but the one extent seen is "HP Serial Attached SCSI Disk" = 1.09 TB. Therefore I believe the difference is the missing Extent = apprx 836.01 GB.
Is there anyway to fix the missing extent?... or is the only choice to delete the datastore and start from scratch. We don't have backups of the VM's.
Thanks in advance...