Hot add/remove disk on vNVMe controller doesn't work properly with Window guest OS.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides guidance to make hot add/remove disk on vNVMe controller work. Users can follow up the requirement to enable hot add/remove disk support on vNVMe controller for Windows guest OS.

Symptoms:
Windows may not detect any change when add/remove disk on vNVMe controller.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.2

Cause

NVMe 1.3 spec introduced Async Event Notification (AEN) mechanism which will enable NVMe controller to send async event to host about device change. For vShpere, the default NVMe version is set to 1.0 for all Windows guests, hot add/remove will not work. To make it work, guest OS also should be able to handle AEN properly

Resolution

Starting with vSphere 8.0.2, a Windows Server 2022 or Windows 11 (or later) virtual machine with hardware version 21 (or later) and NVMe controller will have its NVMe version set to version 1.3 by default. For proper hot add, remove and extend operations, users should upgrade Windows at least to KB5029250 (OS Build 20348.1906) for Windows Server 2022 and KB5028254 (OS Build 22621.2070) for Windows 11. If any above conditions are unmet, hot add/remove/extend for Windows would not work.

Workaround:
Currently there is no workaround.