I had an ESXi 6.5 server on a Dell R520 with 8-disk RAID6 ( 8 x 3TB, 18TB)
As mentioned in several threads here, following a RAID crash and drive rebuild, the only datastore disappeared.
esxcli storage vmfs snapshot list
53fc9638-dab159ce-4eea-c81f66b9a264
Volume Name: datastore1
VMFS UUID: 53fc9638-dab159ce-4eea-c81f66b9a264
Can mount: false
Reason for un-mountability: some extents missing
Can resignature: false
Reason for non-resignaturability: some extents missing
Unresolved Extent Count: 2
partedUtil getptbl /dev/disks/naa.690b11c00222400024dabd24064e6018
gpt
2188400 255 63 35156656128
1 64 8191 C12A7328F81F11D2BA4B00A0C93EC93B systemPartition 128
5 8224 520191 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
6 520224 1032191 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
7 1032224 1257471 9D27538040AD11DBBF97000C2911D1B8 vmkDiagnostic 0
8 1257504 1843199 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
9 1843200 7086079 9D27538040AD11DBBF97000C2911D1B8 vmkDiagnostic 0
2 7086080 15472639 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
3 15472640 35156656094 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 vmfs 0
esxcfg-volume -l
VMFS UUID/label: 53fc9638-dab159ce-4eea-c81f66b9a264/datastore1
Can mount: No (some extents missing)
Can resignature: No (some extents missing)
Extent name: naa.690b11c00222400024dabd24064e6018:3 range: 0 - 17036287 (MB)
Extent name: naa.690b11c00222400024dabd24064e6018:3 range: 962072674048 - 962072674303 (MB)
Mounting partition #3 via linux/vmfs-tools was successful, and I've been able to copy some of the smaller VMs to a different ESXi server. However, there is a 17TB VM that I would prefer to be able to run P2V Converter on it ( since it contains a large filesystem that is mostly empty at this time ). It consists of 7 .vmdk files , 5 x 2TiB and 2 x 3TB, and the VM has all the drives combined via LVM into a single large volume group.
The server had been originally installed as a 12TB RAID6 (under ESXi 5.5), but the RAID had been grown twice (I think), to 15TB and then 18TB, and the Datastore had been grown twice as well.
I've been unable to figure out how to mount the Datastore inside ESXi. I tried the GUI, but it insists it has to reformat the volume, so I do not proceed.
Any suggestions for getting the data off? Some way to mount the datastore inside ESXi?
Or perhaps I can loopback mount the .vmdk files (via linux/vmfs-tools), reconstruct the volume group, and mount the oversize ext4 filesystem?