Cannot remove passthrough setup on ESXi

passthroughvmware-esxivmware-vsphere

I have an ESXi host, but it does not have local hard disk. It use disks which are shared via fibre channel. Afterthat, I setup passthrough for the fibre channel. After rebooting ESXi host, we cannot find any datastores. And I also cannot remove passthrough setup (after removing and reboot, it's still there). Does anyone know how to fix it?

Best Answer

The following best practice prevents this problem from occurring:

Always unmark devices for passthrough before removing them from the server. 

The following workaround describes how to force the change from passthrough mode to non-passthrough mode:

  1. Edit the /etc/vmware/esx.conf file by changing the owner of the PCI device from passthru to vmkernel. The following is an example of the necessary edit: Change from: /device/000:02.0/owner = "passthru" Change to: /device/000:02.0/owner = "vmkernel"

  2. Reboot the ESX/ESXi host.