6.0

Table Of Contents
When you perform datastore resignaturing, consider the following points:
n
Datastore resignaturing is irreversible.
n
The LUN copy that contains the VMFS datastore that you resignature is no longer treated as a LUN
copy.
n
A spanned datastore can be resignatured only if all its extents are online.
n
The resignaturing process is crash and fault tolerant. If the process is interrupted, you can resume it
later.
n
You can mount the new VMFS datastore without a risk of its UUID colliding with UUIDs of any other
datastore, such as an ancestor or child in a hierarchy of LUN snapshots.
Prerequisites
Launch the vSphere Client and log in to a vCenter Server system.
To resignature a mounted datastore copy, first unmount it.
Before you resignature a VMFS datastore, perform a storage rescan on your host so that the host updates its
view of LUNs presented to it and discovers any LUN copies.
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 Assign a New Signature and click Next.
7 In the Ready to Complete page, review the datastore configuration information and click Finish.
What to do next
After resignaturing, you might have to do the following:
n
If the resignatured datastore contains virtual machines, update references to the original VMFS
datastore in the virtual machine files, including .vmx, .vmdk, .vmsd, and .vmsn.
n
To power on virtual machines, register them with vCenter Server.
Upgrading VMFS Datastores
If your datastores were formatted with VMFS2 or VMFS3, you must upgrade the datastores to VMFS5.
When you perform datastore upgrades, consider the following items:
n
To upgrade a VMFS2 datastore, you use a two-step process that involves upgrading VMFS2 to VMFS3
first. To access the VMFS2 datastore and perform the VMFS2 to VMFS3 conversion, use an ESX/ESXi 4.x
or earlier host.
After you upgrade your VMFS2 datastore to VMFS3, the datastore becomes available on the ESXi 6.0
host, where you complete the process of upgrading to VMFS5.
n
You can perform a VMFS3 to VMFS5 upgrade while the datastore is in use with virtual machines
powered on.
vSphere Administration with the vSphere Client
326 VMware, Inc.