Datastore showing as inactive in Vmware

Was this being used as a VMFS datastore e.g. VMFS

Yes it was. I tried to unmount but getting the error:

"Cannot remove datastore 'datastore_name' because Storage I/O Control is enabled on it"


I tried following the VMware KB article with no success. This storage device is connected to several of my hosts. I'm not sure exactly what to do.. I don't know why unplugging it and plugging it back in freaked it out.

I'm surprised you were able to create a VMFS datastore on a USB external disk?

which is generally not supported.

It's shared out on the network. So the IP of the server and share name "/ISO" was able to bring it up when adding a storage device.

I guess it's working similar to a NAS.

okay, this is a NFS resource.

can you right click and unmount the device, or re-add with the same IP Address.

no VMs currently have any mapping e.g. cdrom to the datastore, this can sometimes stop it from disappearing.

Yes, I stand corrected, it is NFS.  
I was able to get rid of one inactive datastore by checking each VM and seeing that an ISO was mounted in the CD drive. So that worked..

However, I still have 1 data store showing as inactive after I checked each VM verifying that all VMs CD drive is set to Client Device. I can unmount it from the "Inventory" menu, but when I right click the datastore, unmount is greyed out.

Here is what im seeing when trying to unmount.

Thanks again for your help on this.. hopefully you have an idea.
inactive.jpg
Hosts.jpg
resource-in-use.jpg
unmount-from-inventory.jpg

is this NAS connected to the network correctly with same IP Address as before?

Yep, it's plugged into the same server as before which hosts it. It's just a network share which is hosted on that USB removable drive. It's not a NAS that has an assigned IP address, it's just acting as one in a way..

this is NFS ?

Yes it is mounted as an NFS datastore.

if you try and re-scan storage does it disappear

There's a VM which is connected to that datastore that is holding a snapshot. I'm going to delete the snapshot and try a rescan.

If the datastore is not mounted or available how is the VM working?

I'm not sure.. When I highlighted the Datastore, it showed a VM connected to it but it was it's own host. I deleted all snapshots and still cannot remove the datastore.

I also cannot remove in SSH. I included some screenshots of what I'm attempting with no luck. It's almost as if the host doesn't recogonize the volume name
invalid.jpg
list-command.jpg

Well, after rebooting the hosts, I am able to remove the storage from the host under the configuration tab > storage. I right click the  Datastore and can now unmount. Problem is I have to do this on 12 hosts with several critical VMs. I wish there was a better way to do this.

If I just restart the management services, will this work without affecting the VMs?

I've requested that this question be closed as follows:

Accepted answer: 100 points for ZDICT's comment #a39624215
Assisted answer: 0 points for kjs00333's comment #a39527783

for the following reason:

Resolved after a host reboot.

I was able to resolve this with the reboot of each host that had this datastore connected to it.