6.0

n
SPC-2 compliancy enablement
ESXi can detect the VMFS datastore copy and display it in the vSphere Client or the vSphere Web Client.
You have an option of mounting the datastore copy with its original UUID or changing the UUID to
resignature the datastore.
Whether you chose resignaturing or mounting without resignaturing depends on how the LUNs are
masked in the storage environment. If your hosts are able to see both copies of the LUN, then resignaturing
is the recommended method. Otherwise, mounting is an option.
Keep Existing Datastore Signature in the vSphere Client
If you do not need to resignature a VMFS datastore copy, you can mount it without changing its signature.
You can keep the signature if, for example, you maintain synchronized copies of virtual machines at a
secondary site as part of a disaster recovery plan. In the event of a disaster at the primary site, you mount
the datastore copy and power on the virtual machines at the secondary site.
IMPORTANT You can mount a VMFS datastore copy only if it does not collide with the original VMFS
datastore that has the same UUID. To mount the copy, the original VMFS datastore has to be offline.
When you mount the VMFS datastore, ESXi allows both reads and writes to the datastore residing on the
LUN copy. The LUN copy must be writable. The datastore mounts are persistent and valid across system
reboots.
Prerequisites
Launch the vSphere Client and log in to a vCenter Server system.
Before you mount a VMFS datastore, perform a storage rescan on your host so that it updates its view of
LUNs presented to it.
Procedure
1 Log in to the vSphere Client and select the server from the inventory panel.
2 Click the Configuration tab and click Storage in the Hardware panel.
3 Click Add Storage.
4 Select the Disk/LUN storage type and click Next.
5 From the list of LUNs, select the LUN that has a datastore name displayed in the VMFS Label column
and click Next.
The name present in the VMFS Label column indicates that the LUN is a copy that contains a copy of an
existing VMFS datastore.
6 Under Mount Options, select Keep Existing Signature.
7 In the Ready to Complete page, review the datastore configuration information and click Finish.
What to do next
If you later want to resignature the mounted datastore, you must unmount it first.
Resignature a VMFS Datastore Copy in the vSphere Client
Use datastore resignaturing if you want to retain the data stored on the VMFS datastore copy.
When resignaturing a VMFS copy, ESXi assigns a new UUID and a new label to the copy, and mounts the
copy as a datastore distinct from the original.
The default format of the new label assigned to the datastore is snap-snapID-oldLabel, where snapID is an
integer and oldLabel is the label of the original datastore.
Chapter 24 Managing Storage in the vSphere Client
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