6.5

Table Of Contents
What to do next
You can later run esxcli storage filesystem volume unmount to unmount the snapshot volume.
esxcli <conn_options> storage filesystem volume unmount --volume-label=<label>|--volume-
uuid=<VMFS-UUID>
Mount a Datastore with vicfg-volume
The vicfg-volume command supports mounting and unmounting volumes.
Use the vicfg-volume command to list mounted volumes, mount new volumes, and unmount a volume.
Specify one of the connection options listed in “Connection Options for vCLI Host Management
Commands,” on page 19 in place of <conn_options>.
Procedure
1 List all volumes that have been detected as snapshots or replicas.
vicfg-volume <conn_options> --list
2 Run vicfg-volume --persistent-mount with the VMFS-UUID or label as an argument to mount a
volume.
vicfg-volume <conn_options> --persistent-mount <VMFS-UUID|label>
N This command fails if the original copy is online.
What to do next
You can later run vicfg-volume --unmount to unmount the snapshot or replica volume.
vicfg-volume <conn_options> --unmount <VMFS-UUID|label>
The vicfg-volume command supports resignaturing a snapshot volume and mounting and unmounting the
volume. You can also make the mounted volume persistent across reboots and query a list of snapshot
volumes and original volumes.
Resignaturing VMFS Copies
You can use datastore resignaturing to retain the data stored on the VMFS datastore copy.
When resignaturing a VMFS copy, the ESXi host assigns a new UUID and a new label to the copy, and
mounts the copy as a datastore distinct from the original. Because ESXi prevents you from resignaturing the
mounted datastore, unmount the datastore before resignaturing.
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.
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 conicting with UUIDs of any other
datastore, such as an ancestor or child in a hierarchy of LUN snapshots.
Chapter 3 Managing Files
VMware, Inc. 33