This article explains why a datastore may appear empty from the datastore browser, even when the virtual machine does not report a problem and SSH/CLI access shows the correct content.

Symptoms:

VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Installable
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x
VMware VirtualCenter 2.5.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1

• If the LUNs are unpresented and represented after a storage maintenance.
• If the IP information of the iSCSI storage changes.
• When recovering a VMFS volume if its partitions were lost.
• If the 32nd character of a long virtual machine name is a space.

If the information displayed via the terminal is correct but the vSphere Client (particularly when connected directly to an individual VMware ESX server) is not:

• Confirm that the 32nd character of the virtual machine name is not a space. If so, rename the virtual machine and migrate it to ensure the virtual machine files are renamed. For additional information on virtual machine migration, see: Migrating virtual machines (1017769).
• Restart the management services on the VMware ESX host. For more information, see: Restarting the Management agents on an ESX or ESXi Server(1003490).
  

If restarting management agents does not resolve this issue, refresh the information from vSphere Client connected to vCenter Server:

1. Open the VMware vSphere or Infrastructure Client and connect to your VMware vCenter or VirtualCenter Server
2. Select an ESX host with access to the datastore.
3. Click the Configuration tab.
4. Click the Storage section (under Hardware Category).
5. Click Refresh (in the upper right corner).

• Experienced the problem after performing a VMFS resignature process
• There are or issues with snapshot LUNs
• After unmounting/mounting NFS datastores,
• After changing storage presentation.

The issue may be due to invalid or duplicated references in the VMware vCenter or VirtualCenter Server database regarding the datastore, or there are other inconsistent references across the cluster (for instance, not all ESX hosts are presented the datastore in the same way; ensure there is uniform presentation).

To resolve this issue, remove all the invalid references to the old datastore name. The following objects can reference the datastore:

• A registered virtual machine.
• A registered template.
• A host on which the datastore appears on Datastores list, even when the storage device is no longer accessible.

To remove these references:

1. Go to the Datastores view.
2. Select the invalid, nonexistent, old, or removed datastore.
3. Select the Virtual Machines tab.
4. Right-click all of the virtual machines and templates and click Remove from Inventory from the context menu.
5. If the datastore is still visible, click the Hosts tab (to determine which hosts still 'see' the invalid datastore).
6. In each of these hosts click Configuration and Storage, then click Refresh.

When there are no longer any object references to the datastore (and the datastore itself is not visible from the Storage view), it disappears from vCenter Server's inventory and views.

For related information, see the vSphere Command-Line Interface Documentation.データストアがデータストア ブラウザに空のように表示される
数据存储在数据存储浏览器中显示为空