ESXi 6.x to 7.x Upgrade Failure with PSOD on Hosts with HPE B140i RAID Controller

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

During an ESXi upgrade from 6.x to 7.0 on a host utilizing an HPE B140i RAID Controller as the boot device, an unexpected error occurred, resulting in a Purple Screen of Death (PSOD). The specific error message is as follows:
"Two filesystems with the same UUID have been detected. Make sure you do not have two ESXi installations."

The host utilizes an HPE B140i RAID Controller for the boot device, which is managed by the hpdsa vmklinux driver.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7

Cause

The B140i RAID Controller leverages the HPE proprietary "hpdsa" driver for RAID management. This driver constructs a RAID volume utilizing AHCI-compliant disks, with two disks currently included in the RAID configuration.

The "hpdsa" driver, a vmklinux driver, is not compatible with vSphere 7.0. Consequently, the default vmw_ahci driver included in vSphere 7.0 might recognize the two disks previously configured within the RAID volume as individual disks. If these disks were part of a RAID configuration, they might contain identical data and UUIDs, potentially leading to the observed PSOD. HPE has previously documented similar occurrences where the ahci driver was loaded before the hpdsa driver:
https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=emr_na-a00073851en_us

Resolution

The "hpdsa" driver, responsible for managing the B140i RAID Controller, is a vmklinux driver that is no longer supported in vSphere 7.0. HPE has indicated they do not plan to release a native version of this driver. As a result, both the "hpdsa" driver and the associated HPE Dynamic Smart Array B140i controllers are unsupported in vSphere 7.0. HPE has issued an advisory to ask customers to replace the controller with a supported one before upgrading to vSphere 7.0:
https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=emr_na-a00106849en_us