Unmounting a datastore fails with an error because of VSAN traces

After the upgrade to ESXi 5.5 I noticed a new folder called “vsantraces” on a datastore:

vsantraces

When you try to unmount the datastore with the vsantraces folder, you will get an error message like this:

“Cannot unmount volume ‘Datastore Name:’ because file system is busy. Correct the problem and retry the operation.”

The vsantraces folder is used by the VSAN module to store traces for VSAN related issues on the VMFS datastore. ESXi 5.5 will create the folder even if you are not using VSAN…

If you are NOT using VSAN, you can delete the folder/files and turn off the VSAN trace service permanently:

  • connect to the ESXi 5.5 host and stop the VSAN trace service:

/etc/init.d/vsantraced stop

vsantraced_stop

Now you can delete the vsantraces folder and/or unmount the datastore.

  • to permanently turn off the VSAN trace service:

chkconfig vsantraced off

chkconfig_vsantraced_off

If you want to start the service again, just use “/etc/init.d/vsantraced start”

 

If you are USING VSAN, you can change the datastore used by the VSAN trace:

esxcli vsan trace set -p your_datastore

 

3 Comments

  1. Vaseem Mohammed

    Thanks for this article, it helped me.
    One strange thing is, if I change my prompt to /etc/init.d # and run vsantraced stop it throws error -sh: vsantraced: not found
    is this with every service? I need to give full path?

  2. leon

    thnx for the article….it made my day 🙂 now i could delete the datastores. thnx!
    leon

  3. jack

    Silly question but I am new to this environment, how can i be sure we are or aren’t using vsan? The IT folks that set all this up are gone.

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