You may get any error: “Datastore ‘StorageX’ conflicts with an existing datastore in the datacenter that has the same URL (ds:///vmfs/volumes/xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/) but is backed by different physical storage.”

Below are the symtoms which you may encounter with:

  • Unable to remove the datastore from the vCenter Server inventory.
  • The datastore is grayed out.
  • All options for the datastore are grayed out.

To resolve this issue, manually remove the datastore references from the vCenter Server Inventory.

  1. Run the following to identify the objects using the datastore:
    select * from VPX_ENTITY where name = ‘<datastore_name>’ The above returns the ID
    Run the following to see what uses it:
    select * from VPX_DS_ASSIGNMENT where DS_ID=<ID>;select * from VPX_VM_DS_SPACE where DS_ID=<ID>;select * from VPX_DATASTORE where ID=<ID>;select * from VPX_ENTITY where ID=<ID>;
  2. Identify and the objects identified by the second query from the inventory:
    select ENTITY_ID from VPX_DS_ASSIGNMENT where DS_ID=<ID>; This returns the ENTITY_ID
    select * from VPX_ENTITY where ID = <ENTITY_ID>
  3. Remove the objects (templates, VMs) using the vSphere Client from the inventory

The datastore should disappear after all objects using it are removed.

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