Deprecated VMFS volume(s) found on the host

Spread The Knowledge

In this blog we will see how you can resolve the alert on the vSphere console of “Deprecated VMFS volume(s) found on the host. Please consider upgrading volume(s) to the latest version”.

Understanding VMFS Datastores

To store virtual disks, ESXi uses datastores. The datastores are logical containers that hide specifics of physical storage from virtual machines and provide a uniform model for storing the virtual machine files. The datastores that you deploy on block storage devices use the native vSphere Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) format. It is a special high-performance file system format that is optimized for storing virtual machines.

The VMFS datastore can be extended to span over several physical storage devices that include SAN LUNs and local storage. This feature allows you to pool storage and gives you flexibility in creating the datastore necessary for your virtual machines.

You can increase the capacity of the datastore while the virtual machines are running on the datastore. This ability lets you add new space to your VMFS datastores as your virtual machine requires it. VMFS is designed for concurrent access from multiple physical machines and enforces the appropriate access controls on the virtual machine files.

Versions of VMFS Datastores

Several versions of the VMFS file system have been released since its introduction. Currently, ESXi supports VMFS5 and VMFS6.

For all supported VMFS versions, ESXi offers complete read and write support. On the supported VMFS datastores, you can create and power on virtual machines. For more details click here.

Now you can check the below steps to upgrade the VMFS Datastores.

Upgrading VMFS Datastores

VMFS5 Datastores– You cannot upgrade a VMFS5 datastore to VMFS6. If you have a VMFS5 datastore in your environment, create a VMFS6 datastore and migrate virtual machines from the VMFS5 datastore to VMFS6.

VMFS3 Datastores– ESXi no longer supports VMFS3 datastores. The ESXi host automatically upgrades VMFS3 to VMFS5 when mounting existing datastores. The host performs the upgrade operation in the following circumstances:
At the first boot after an upgrade to ESXi 6.7 or later, when the host mounts all discovered VMFS3 datastores. When you manually mount the VMFS3 datastores that are discovered after the boot, or mount persistently unmounted datastores.

Why switch to VMFS-5?

Improved scalability and performance.
Does not use SCSI-2 Reservations, but uses the ATS VAAI primitives.
Uses GPT (GUID Partition Table) rather than MBR, allowing for pass-through RDM files greater than 2TB.
VMFS5 in ESXi 5.5 now supports upto 62 TB VMDK and non-passthrough RDM.

What are the limitations for VMFS-5?

VMFS-5 limits the number of extents to 32 and the total datastore size to 64TB, but the individual extents are not limited to 2TB each. For example, you can create a datastore with a LUN size of 64TB, or one with up to 32 extents up to maximum size of 64TB.
Only pass-through RDMs (Raw Device Mapping) can be created with a size >2TB. Non-pass-through RDMs and virtual disk files are still limited to 2TB -512B in 5.0 and 5.1. In ESXi 5.5, support for non-passthrough RDMs has been increased to 62TB.
Passthrough RDMs are supported up to 64TB in size.
Both upgraded and newly-created VMFS-5 volumes supported the larger Passthrough RDM size.

Upgrade a VMFS3 Datastore to VMFS5

Upgrading from VMFS-3 to VMFS-5 can be done on-the-fly (virtual machines do not need to be powered-off, suspended, or migrated).

Procedure

Navigate to the VMFS3 datastore.
Select Upgrade to VMFS5 from the right-click menu.
Verify that the hosts accessing the datastore support VMFS5.
Click OK to start the upgrade.
Perform a rescan on all hosts that are associated with the datastore.

The datastore is upgraded to VMFS5 and is available to all hosts that are associated with the datastore.

References