Think of metadata repair as — enough to get VMs off the datastore. Once rescued, destroy and recreate the volume. Have a VMFS metadata horror story? Or a recovery trick I missed? Drop it in the comments.
vim-cmd hostsvc/storage/filesystem_volume_info | grep -A5 -B5 "error" Or use the classic: repair vmfs metadata
esxcli storage filesystem rescan esxcli storage vmfs snapshot resignature -l DATASTORE_NAME Then attempt mount: Think of metadata repair as — enough to
vmkfstools -P /vmfs/volumes/DATASTORE_NAME If you see “Permission denied” or “No such file or directory” despite the path existing — that’s metadata trouble. 1. Remount Without Reboot Sometimes it’s a transient lock issue. Or a recovery trick I missed
When metadata gets corrupted, ESXi can’t navigate the filesystem — even though your VM data might still be perfectly intact. | Cause | Example | |-------|---------| | Sudden storage disconnection | Fibre Channel or iSCSI drop during heavy I/O | | Power loss to a SAN | Dirty shutdown without battery-backed cache | | Force-removing a LUN | Unmapping a datastore while VMs are running | | Buggy storage array firmware | Incorrect SCSI writes | | Manual block-level edits | Trying to use dd or recovery tools incorrectly | First, Is It Really Metadata Corruption? Run this check on the affected ESXi host (SSH):
esxcli storage vmfs mount -l DATASTORE_NAME --force After forced mount, move VMs off the datastore and reformat. 4. Low-Level Metadata Recovery (Last Resort) Use vmfs-tools (Linux-based recovery suite):