Unmounting VMFS datastores and detaching storage devices

Unmounting a datastore is done when you intend to preserve the data on a VMFS volume, but remove access to the volume. Detaching is performed on a LUN device and is performed to make sure that the access to the LUN is gracefully removed. It is recommended that you unmount a VMFS datastore and detach its corresponding storage device entry before the LUN backing the datastore is unmapped from an ESXi host.

Getting ready

Before you begin, make sure that the following steps have been performed:

• Migrate all the VMs on the datastore that you intend to unmount to another datastore.
• The datastore should be removed from a datastore cluster.
• The datastore should remain unmanaged...