Storage device has entered the All Paths Down (APD) state

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• You receive the following event message when a storage device connected to your VMware ESXi host enters the all paths down (APD) state:
  
  Device or filesystem with identifier device_ID has entered All Paths Down
   
• You might also see an error message in the logs similar to:
  
  T13:41:33.250Z cpu4:8598)StorageApdHandler: 692: APD Handle Created with lock.

Notes:

• This log message indicates that the system had an APD event, but does not mean it is currently at the APD state, unless there are any connectivity issues, these messages are seen in/around ESXi booting up or rebooting. 
• The messages indicate that the system has turned on a timer that allows your VMware ESXi host to continue retrying attempts to re-establish connectivity with the device for a limited time period. By default, the APD timeout is set to 140 seconds. For more details on the sequence of failover events, read Understanding the storage path failover sequence in VMware ESXi native multipathing .

Impact

If the device becomes available within the specified timeout, the host and its virtual machine continue to run without experiencing any problems. If the device does not recover when the timeout ends, the host stops its attempts at retries and terminates any non-virtual machine I/O.

Example

A storage device is considered to be in the APD state when it becomes unavailable to your ESXi host for an unspecified period of time. In contrast with the permanent device loss (PDL) state, the host treats the APD state as transient and expects the device to be available again. The reasons for an APD state can be, for example, a failed switch or a disconnected storage cable.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.X

Resolution

Identify and eliminate any causes that might trigger the APD state of the storage device.

For information on:

• Block storage devices, see Lost or Degraded connectivity to Storage Device .
• NFS storage devices, see Troubleshooting NFS datastore connectivity issues .

For more information on more APD event messages, see:

• All Paths Down for a storage device.

Additional Information