VMware ESXi 5.0 remove iscsi lun from datastore
Hello,
I have a datastore on ESXi 5.0 that consists of a 2.7TB local disk and a 2TB iscsi LUN. I want to remove the LUN. Is there a way to do that, or do I need to destroy the datastore and recreate it, this time assigning only the local disk?
What will happen if the LUN dies, or loses network connection?
At the moment I am considering adding a new datastore, shutting down the VMs and removing them from inventory, then moving their folders to the new datastore, and re-adding them to inventory.
I thought about using Veeam Backup to do migration, but it does not copy the snapshots and failed on machines that were not shut down.
Thanks!
I have a datastore on ESXi 5.0 that consists of a 2.7TB local disk and a 2TB iscsi LUN. I want to remove the LUN. Is there a way to do that, or do I need to destroy the datastore and recreate it, this time assigning only the local disk?
What will happen if the LUN dies, or loses network connection?
At the moment I am considering adding a new datastore, shutting down the VMs and removing them from inventory, then moving their folders to the new datastore, and re-adding them to inventory.
I thought about using Veeam Backup to do migration, but it does not copy the snapshots and failed on machines that were not shut down.
Thanks!
I'm not sure what you mean by "removing" the LUN. Generally speaking if you don't need to have the host machine connected to that device any more, you can simply delete it from the storage configuration on the ESXi host. The question, though, is where your VMWare software, logs, etc., reside and where the VMs are stored. A LUN is basically just an iSCSI connection to a physical location on a file server/NAS. So, where is that and what is stored there?
ASKER
Hi,
Initially the datastore was 2.7TB, hosted on fixed local storage. THen we increased the size of the datastore by adding a 2TB iscsi lun from a NAS. Unfortunatelly, even though we haven't used the space - it is set to prefer the fixed storage, we cannot reverse it and reduce the size of the datastore. When I try detaching the iscsi target, it says it is being used in a datastore, so we cannot remove it.
Initially the datastore was 2.7TB, hosted on fixed local storage. THen we increased the size of the datastore by adding a 2TB iscsi lun from a NAS. Unfortunatelly, even though we haven't used the space - it is set to prefer the fixed storage, we cannot reverse it and reduce the size of the datastore. When I try detaching the iscsi target, it says it is being used in a datastore, so we cannot remove it.
I'm not sure, I'm following here...
you have extended a local datastore, by adding an iSCSI LUN to it, as an extent?
so you have two datastores, connected to the ESXi server?
one on local storage and one on iSCSI storage?
or do you just have one single datastore?
If you have added additional storage to a local datastore, you will have to destroy the entire datastore, you remove the iSCSI LUN.
Could you upload a screenshot of your datastores?
you have extended a local datastore, by adding an iSCSI LUN to it, as an extent?
so you have two datastores, connected to the ESXi server?
one on local storage and one on iSCSI storage?
or do you just have one single datastore?
If you have added additional storage to a local datastore, you will have to destroy the entire datastore, you remove the iSCSI LUN.
Could you upload a screenshot of your datastores?
ASKER
I have a single datastore, which I increased by adding the iscsi. Now I realize it's a very bad practice, but I still need to deal with it. It looks like I will have to destroy it and rebuild it. I can move all the VMs, but there is a .locker folder with logs on it. That would probably prevent me from destroying the datastore, or will it?
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when you state 2.7TB local disk, do you mean a virtual machine with a 2.7TB virtual disk?
or the physical disk is 2.7TB, and the datastore is 2.7TB, and it has a 2TB virtual machine disk ?
the 2TB virtual disk is used as an iSCSI Server with 2TB LUN?
In removing a datastore, the first thing that should be done, is the contents removed.
and then the datastore unmounted from the ESXi server.