How to add an existing ESXi datastore to a new host without losing data?

Question

VMware

Good afternoon.
On the advice of colleagues here in this discussion, you need to downgrade ESXi 6.7 to 5.5 U1.
We put 5.5 on the flash drive. Accordingly, the server remains hard and SSD with datastores and virtual machines from 6.7. But it is not clear how to add these datastores to 5.5 without deleting the data.
If you select Add datastore, then at one of the steps the wizard is going to format the disk, so the data will be deleted.
If you click Rescan (I read somewhere that this is exactly what you need to do) - the system does not find existing storages.
I would be very grateful for the help, of course I tried to google, but I did not find anything specific. Basically, information about how to add a virtual machine through "Browse datastore" - "add to inventory" is everywhere, but how to add the datastore itself is incomprehensible ...

Answer 1

Most likely, you have VMFS6 there. ESXi 5.5 will not understand this format. So the correct way is to back up the machines, and after rolling back the ESXi version and recreating the datastore, return the machines from the backup.

Answer 2

I wanted to write you a ready-made solution without a downgrade. You decide to be funny.) Rake to help)

Answer 3

Tin.
Too sharp downgrade. The VMFS version is probably not recognized by the old hyper. In addition, if the machines were created in 6.7, the machines will not work there either.
Make a backup or export to OVF, then try to import on a new hyper, if it doesn’t work, create the machines again, loading the screws on the side manually.

Answer 4

Colleagues, thank you all for your replies. Today I installed a discrete Intel network adapter in the server.
We will test)