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On the vsphere web client I have a strange problem with one of my datastores as it's displayed capacity is incorrect. Originaly it had 1TB of disk space. After I increased it's capacity on 1.4TB the next day it reverted back to 1TB.

The particular datastore in question (MSA_VD005) is located on HP MSA Storage. Originally it had 1TB of storage and from the MSA Array I increased it at 1.4TB, and after that I increased its capacity from the vsphere web client. (Standard procedure as i do always)

The very next day I've noticed a Datastore usage on disk alarm in the web client. When I checked the datastore it had 1TB of space, as if I never increased it.

If I rescan all storage adapters on the hosts, it will show a correct value of ~1.4TB again but If i click the Refresh button it will revert to 1TB again.

In order to verify all of this I logged in with SSH on one of the hosts and verified that the datastore size is indeed ~1.4. It is just that the vsphere web-client somehow pulls wrong value and generates warnings based on that value.

After rescan of the storage adapters: After rescan of the storage adapters After clicking the refresh button After clicking the refres button Datastore size as displayed from the ESXi Shell Datastore size as displayed from the esxi shell

HopelessN00b
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Spirit
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  • I found the problem, and we fixed it.. I just forgot to update the question and give an answer... I think that it will be useful for future vSphere admins if I update it, but then again you are the moderator.. :) – Spirit Mar 30 '15 at 09:28
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    The problem was occurring because of the inconsistent versions of the ESXi Hypervisiors installed at the hosts.. The Datastore was shared amongst 3 physical hosts. Originaly they were with `ESXi-5.5.0`.. Than we did an update of the two of the host with the `ESXi-5.5.0 Update 2`, but we were unable to update the third host because of several reasons (not worth mentioning). After a while we made the update of the third host, and the problem was gone for good. As a side note: I am the VMware admin and I am the Storage Admin :D – Spirit Mar 30 '15 at 09:38
  • Go ahead and self-answer, then. – HopelessN00b Mar 30 '15 at 10:59

1 Answers1

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After some troubleshooting we eventually found out that the problem has occurred because of inconsistent versions of ESXi Hypervisors at the hosts.

The datastore was shared between three ESXi hosts. While we made ESXi Upgrades on the two of the hosts, the third was still left with an older ESXi version, (for reasons not worth mentioning).

The two hosts were at VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.5.0.update02-2068190 and the third was still at VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.1.0-799733 and that was causing the problem.

After we finally upgraded the third ESXi host at the final version, the problem fixed on itself and never occurred again.

Spirit
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    Also as a side note, i found similar problems with datastore size and datastore increasing at other forums, engineers mentioning that inconsistent ESXi version are common cause of datastore sizing problems http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/465568-can-t-increase-datastore-capacity-vmfs-5-54-esxi-5-0 – Spirit Mar 30 '15 at 11:28