An IT department is decommissioning a storage array and tasks an administrator with removing a datastore from ESXi hosts.
What is a prerequisite for unmounting the datastore? (Choose the best answer.)
Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer
A. B. C. D.A.
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2004605The correct answer to the question is D. The datastore must NOT contain powered-off virtual machines as a prerequisite for unmounting the datastore from the ESXi hosts.
When a datastore is unmounted from an ESXi host, it becomes inaccessible to the host and all the virtual machines running on that host. Therefore, before unmounting the datastore, it is important to ensure that the virtual machines running on that datastore are either powered off or migrated to another datastore.
If the datastore still contains powered-off virtual machines, unmounting the datastore may lead to data loss or corruption. This is because the virtual machines' configuration files and virtual disks may be stored on the datastore, and unmounting the datastore may prevent the ESXi host from accessing these files.
Option A, "The datastore is NOT managed by Storage DRS," is not a prerequisite for unmounting the datastore. Storage DRS is a feature in vSphere that automates the load balancing of virtual machine storage across datastores based on utilization and space capacity. It does not impact the process of unmounting a datastore.
Option B, "The datastore is NOT being used by vSphere High Availability heartbeating," is also not a prerequisite for unmounting the datastore. vSphere High Availability (HA) is a feature that provides automated virtual machine restart and failover capabilities. It uses shared storage, such as datastores, to ensure that virtual machines can be restarted on any host in the cluster in case of a host failure. However, unmounting a datastore does not impact the operation of vSphere HA.
Option C, "The datastore is NOT referenced by a host profile," is not a prerequisite for unmounting the datastore. Host profiles are used to apply a standardized configuration to ESXi hosts, including storage configuration. If a datastore is referenced in a host profile, unmounting the datastore may result in a configuration mismatch between the host and the host profile. However, this does not prevent the unmounting of the datastore.