KB ID 0000401 

Problem

I did a VMware VI3 to vSphere (4.1 U1) upgrade today. While bringing all the guest machines across, suddenly I could no longer browse the datastore, I only had one more guest to “Add to the inventory”, and all the mission critical machines were already migrated. I tried rebooting the virtual center, I tried restarting the ESXi host machines, still it sat saying “Searching Datastore……”.

Solution

1. I found the solution by accident. I was adding virtual machines to the new VSphere inventory, so I went in search of a method of doing it from the console, I was just about to:

Command to add a VMware guest to the inventory

[box]vmware-cmd -s register {full path to virtual machine}MACHINE_NAME.vmx[/box]

But, while looking in the folder with the guest files, I saw thousands of log files, I guess the VI client is struggling to parse them all, and display them. A quick internet search and I found out I can safely delete the log files.

2. Log into the ESX/ESXi servers console, for ESXi servers (version 4.0 and below) see here, for newer versions you can simply enable SSH access from Troubleshooting Mode Options > Enable Remote Tech support (SSH).

3. Log on as root and issue the following command to find the symlink path to your shared storage:

[box]ls -l /vmfs/volumes/[/box]

4. Now you know your symlink, you can change to the folder that contains the affected guest OS.

[box]cd /vmfs/volumes/{your symlink}/{your vm folder}[/box]

5. To get rid of all the log files, simply issue the following command.

[box]rm -f vmware-*.log[/box]

6. Now retry and you should see the folder contents when you “Browse Datastore”.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

NA