Applicable on: vCenter 6.5/6.0

Sometimes, when you delete a datastore, it will be remaining visible in vCenter web client, with the state “Inaccessible”. In this article I will show you how to remove a stuck, inaccessible datastore permanently.

 

Method A:

it might be just staying there as a shadow, go to the “VMs” tab under the targeted datastore and make sure that no VMs are there before moving to Method B, if there’s any, just follow these steps:

(Note: in this screenshot from my lab shows the VMs in powered-off state, just ignore that and assume that your VMs are in a “powered-on” state)

click the VM name >> Configure >> Edit >> set CD/DVD drive to “client device” >> Click OK.

Repeat these steps with all of the VMs listed under that inaccessbile datastore.

Now, refresh the browser and check if the datastiore has gone, if it’s still there, proceed with performing method B.

 

Method B:

WARNING:: THIS METHOD IS VERY DANGEROUS AND COULD LEAD TO DATA LOSE, USE IT WITH EXTREME CAUTION

1- open a new tab in your web browser and go to: https://<YOUR-VCENTER-ADDRESS>/mob , you will be prompted to enter credentials, use the “administrator@vsphere.local” user account and it;s password to log in.

2- click on “Content”.

3- search for the word “Datacenters”, you can use your web page search to easily find it, and then click on “group-d1.

 

4- find the datacenter that the datastore belongs to, and click on it (like in the image below).

5- in the “Datastore” section, locate your targeted datastore(s), and then click on the one you need to remove.

6- Make sure that you are selecting the correct datastore.

 

7-  scroll down to the “Methods” section, and then click on “DestryDatastore”.

8- another window will pop up to execute the order, for the last time make sure that you’ve selected the correct datastore, and then click on “Invoke Method”.

 

9- You are done, go back to vCenter web client and refresh, it should no longer be there.

 

Thank you,