Disappearing /vmimages directory

[sheetsb]

For the past several years we have used a SAMBA mount within the /vmimages directory to store all of our operating system ISO images. I recently updated to VC 2.5 and discovered that the directory is no longer browseable from within the settings page for our virtual machines. I thought at first that this behavior was limited to our 3.0.2 ESX hosts since I could browse to the directory on a recently upgraded 3.5 host. So to test my theory I upgraded a second ESX host to 3.5 and the directory disappeared. The output is attached in the two jpg files.

I've seen various postings on this but none of them resolved my issue. I don't want to copy the images to multiple local locations on the ESX hosts, nor do I want to switch to NFS since my group runs the windows servers and the SMB share has worked in the past. Has anyone found the cause of this or found an acceptable fix? I know you can manually enter the path and it will work but that can be somewhat problematic with the number of images we need.

Thanks,

Bill S.

[volkmarfries]

Hi, I have the same problem. This is maybe feature by design, hopefully not. Since now I found no solution, only to copy the iso Files into in vmfs volume.

regards

Volkmar

[sheetsb]

In a previous post to another similar question I found the suggestion to create a symbolic link in one of the data stores. I have been doing this in the ESX hosts local data store using the command suggested before "ln -s /vmimages" and can now at least browse to the directory via the local VMFS data store. I am puzzled by all of this. The ability to browse to /vmimages seemed to be caused by my upgrade to VC 2.5. Until I completed that upgrade I could browse to it on all of my 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 ESX hosts. I can still browse to it on one of my ESX 3.5 hosts that is not part of an HA/DRS cluster.

Bill S.

[GraphiteDak]

We found the same issue after upgrading vc. IMO it should have been clearly stated that this option was to be removed. I am not sure yet if it is a bug or they did remove it completely. Unfortunately all of our clusters have different allocated luns so sym link is too cumbersome for us at this point. With the amount of hosts we have, this has put a real hurt on us.

Maybe they'll put it back in during a vc patch soon. Wishful thinking?

[volkmarfries]

Hi,

I made a workaround with creating a link to "vmimages" with the tool winscp in the localvmfs folder, so now we are able to browse in the same way as before in the vmimages folder. This is a easy way to work with. And yes I think also thay it may be is an issue and hopefilly it will be fixed in a new VC patch

regards volkmar from Hamburg

[Thomas_Kaminski]

Hello,

i have the same problem.

But i see this effect only on servers with intel-cpu, not on servers with amd-cpu. I don't have a solution or a explanation.

bye Thomas

[sheetsb]

My systems are all AMD so I don't think it is related. I ended up creating a symbolic link to my files.