Knowledge Base

The VMware Knowledge Base provides support solutions, error messages and troubleshooting guides
 
Search the VMware Knowledge Base (KB)   View by Article ID
 

Cannot attach a disk backed up by VMware Consolidated Backup to a virtual machine hosted on ESX (1005628)

Symptoms

  • You cannot directly attach a disk backed up by VMware Consolidated Backup to a virtual machine hosted on ESX.
  • If you try to attach a disk, you see the error:

    Failed to open disk scsi0:3 : Unsupported and/or invalid disk type

Resolution

The VMware Infrastructure (VI) Client and VMware vSphere Client generate a 2gbsparse disk by default when creating a template, or when backing up a virtual machine using VMware Consolidated Backup.

However, the 2gbsparse disk cannot be used with virtual machines hosted by ESX. The disk must be converted to a supported format.

Converting virtual machine disks to a supported disk type

Note: Before performing these steps, ensure that the disk you want to access is stored on a location accessible to the ESX host (for example, on a LUN, local disk, or NFS datastore).
  1. Log in to the VMware ESX host as root using an SSH client.
  2. Change to the directory containing the disk using cd.
  3. Run the following command to list the contents of the directory:

    ls -l disk*

    A portion of the output includes lines similar to:

    -rw-------    1 root     root       327680 May 28 15:04 disk-s001.vmdk
    -rw-------    1 root     root       196608 May 28 15:04 disk-s002.vmdk
    -rw-------    1 root     root          359 May 28 15:04 disk.vmdk


  4. Run the following command to clone the disk to a datastore:

    vmkfstools -i disk.vmdk -d <diskformat> /vmfs/volumes/<datastore>/newdisk.vmdk

    Where /vmfs/volumes/<datastore>/newdisk.vmdk is the destination location and name for your virtual disk clone.

    Note: The disk format can be thin, zeroedthick, or eagerzeroedthick. For more information about these formats, see the Additional Information section in Cannot power on a virtual machine because the virtual disk cannot be opened (1004232).


  5. Run the following command:

    ls -l /vmfs/volumes/<datastore>/ls -l disk*

    The output appears similar to:

    -rw-------    1 root     root     3221225472 May 28 15:05 disk-flat.vmdk
    -rw-------    1 root     root            307 May 28 15:05 disk.vmdk


  6. Connect to the ESX host with VI Client or to the vSphere Client directly or though vCenter.
  7. Select the virtual machine on the ESX host.
  8. Depends of the guest operating system capabilities, edit the virtual machine's properties to either hot add or cold add the disk.
  9. When the disk attached to the virtual machine, consult the guest operating system documentation for instructions on how to access the data on the newly attached disk.

Additional Information

For more information about supported disk formats, see the manual pages for vmkfstools:

man vmkfstools


Where the manual pages are unavailable, such as on VMware ESXi, run vmkfstools without additional arguments:

vmkfstools

Request a Product Feature

To request a new product feature or to provide feedback on a VMware product, please visit the Request a Product Feature page.

Feedback

  • 12 Ratings

Did this article help you?
This article resolved my issue.
This article did not resolve my issue.
This article helped but additional information was required to resolve my issue.
What can we do to improve this information? (4000 or fewer characters)
  • 12 Ratings
Actions
KB: