After dealing with a hard drive failure on a Dell Perc H700 array (local storage), The array appears intact, ESXi 5.5 U2 boots up, however the datastore is missing. What I can see is the block volume is there (naa.6782bcb006aad6001ca542740b1db63f), the partition table looks good, but the VMFS-5 datastore is otherwise inaccessible from ESXi itself.
When I attempt to add it back in vSphere Client, I get an error "Either the selected disk already has a VMFS datastore or the host cannot perform a partition table conversion. Select another disk". Note the last primary partition entry "VMFS (Local Dell Disk (naa.6782bcb006aad6001ca542740b1db63f:3) 2.03TB" - this should be automatically mounting at boot.
When I change views to look at storage device, the VMFS-5 partition is missing.
If I drop to command line and issue "esxcli storage vmfs extent list" - there are no datastores & no associations. partedUtil shows the VMFS partition (#3 at the bottom of the output), and upon closer inspection, the VMFS-5 datastore isn't associated with anything.
The question is - if I can see the partition, and ESXi can see the partition, why can't it be mounted? I scoured the vmkernel for anything to indicate the partition couldn't be mounted (errors, warnings) and came up empty handed. Is there a manual way to mount a partition?
# partedUtil get /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6782bcb006aad6001ca542
740b1db63f 271853 255 63 4367319040
1 64 8191 0 128
4 8224 520191 0 0
5 520224 1032191 0 0
6 1032224 1257471 0 0
7 1257504 1843199 0 0
8 1843200 7086079 0 0
2 7086080 15472639 0 0
3 15472640 4367319006 0 0
# esxcli storage filesystem list
Mount Point Volume Name UUID Mounted Type Size Free ------------------------------------------------- -------------- ----------------------------------- ------- ---- ---------- ---------- /vmfs/volumes/5512d32d-c152c825-483a-001e4fca6d94 5512d32d-c152c825-483a-001e4fca6d94 true vfat 4293591040 4277403648
/vmfs/volumes/953aeb7e-df5c90a0-2880-4e85306b7d3c 953aeb7e-df5c90a0-2880-4e85306b7d3c true vfat 261853184 86986752
/vmfs/volumes/94231076-6a7c3db8-75c5-8afd7df5d8ca 94231076-6a7c3db8-75c5-8afd7df5d8ca true vfat 261853184 88207360
/vmfs/volumes/5512d319-0a836ccf-dcab-001e4fca6d94 5512d319-0a836ccf-dcab-001e4fca6d94 true vfat 299712512 96919552