I have a Dell T610 server:
- 2 x E5530 Xeon Processor
- 72GB RAM
- PERC 6/i raid controller, H700.
4 x 1TB drives configured RAID5.
- VMware ESXi 6.0.0 build-5050593 installed + boot volume
- datastore with all VMs
1 x TB drive
- datastore with all ISOs needed to install new VMs
The RAID drives are 3 years old and I wanted to replace them and upgrade ESXI to version 7.
I removed the 4 x RAID drives, installed 2 x new 1TB drives. Configured the new drives to be RAID1.
I tried to install ESXI 7, learned my CPU is not supported. ESXI version 6.0 is last supported version for my CPU.
Plan isn't working, so I wanted to put my old drives back and just continue with that for now.
I put my 4 x original 1TB raid drives back in the exact order as before.
My RAID controller recognized the change, and imported the settings.
My RAID5 volume shows, status is optimal.
My 1TB standalone drive shows.
ESXI 6.0 boots from the raid volume.
Host static IP address is the same as before, root password is the same as before.
From my client, I can open the ESXI management page in my browser and logon with my original root password.
All my VMs show in the list, but they all have a status of 'Invalid'.
In storage, I have no datastores.
The datastore for the RAID5 volume does not show and the datastore for the 1TB standalone drive does not show.
Before removing the drives, I had an NFS share mounted to a QNAP NAS. The NFS mounted datastore is there and working.
How can I reload my datastores on my RAID volume?