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Datastore Browser Issue – Unable to browse the contents of any datastore

I recently came across an issue where I had to remove a Template and add it again because I was getting an error if I tried to edit the settings of it when it was converted back to a VM, the only fix I have found for this has been to remove the VM from the inventory and re-add it via the datastore browser.

As I haven’t had to do this much (in fact this was the first time I did have to do this) I haven’t come across the particular issue where when I tried to re-add the VM back in to vCenter I tried browsing to my datastore and discovered it was blank.

DS01

No matter which datastore I tried to look at they all showed the same thing (in this instance obviously… nothing).

To see if there was actually an issue with the datastores themselves I then opened up Veeam FastSCP and much to my expectations I could see the contents of the datastore, whilst that was good in one way it still meant I had an issue with the datastore browser on my vSphere client.

I should add at this stage that I am using the ThinApp’d vSphere client that I created in an earlier video and for the most part the client has been rock solid (more on that in a later post) but I did wonder if this was something caused by me or whether this was something else so I jumped across to my management pc (which has the fat client installed) and discovered the same issues on the fat client (great, in this instance I discovered that my ThinApp’d client wasn’t at fault) but that left another question, what was causing it.

A quick trawl through Google and the VMTN boards didn’t really throw up any ideas so for a couple of minutes it left me scratching my head when it suddenly hit me, I had experienced issues with my cluster recently that was caused by DPM having powered down one of my cluster nodes and sure enough I had that same server in standby mode this time as well.

A quick power on of the server (ensuring that DPM was switched to Manual rather than automatic) and re-launching the datastore browser suddenly gave me a completely different view of my datastores Smile

datastore

In conclusion, if you’re using DPM to power manage your servers and you experience issues with the datastore browser, you may want to try powering on all your hosts and try launching the browser again, this isn’t the first time that I have experienced issues with DPM and whilst I love the idea behind it I am now aware that it can cause spurious issues in your datacentre if you’re not careful.

Simon

3 Comments

  1. Thanks For Your Great Article.
    But How These Are Related To Each Other ?!!!

    And Can I Turn DPM On After These ? Or If I Turn It On, The Problem Will Appear Again.

    • Hi, I had issues with DPM when I tried to use VMware Converter but those were the only two issues I did have with DPM. I guess it’s more a thing to keep an eye on, if you experience any datastore issues with DPM enabled then change DPM and power on the offline servers and try to do the same operation again, my guess would be that it would work.

      Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t keep DPM disabled but I did disable it if I had any datastore issues.

  2. i have similar issue however the DPM is not enabled on it.. I see empty datastore via VC and seee the contents via VI client.
    Any ideas ??

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