iSCSI discovery sendtarget address remove operation fails

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

When there are active sessions on the targets discovered by an iSCSI discovery sendtarget address, you see these symptoms:

• The iSCSI discovery sendtarget address remove operation fails.
• You see this error similar to:
  
  Cannot remove discovery address as there are active sessions on the targets discovered by this address.

Environment

• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x
• VMware vSphere ESXi 9.x

Cause

This issue occurs because the iSCSI discovery sendtarget address is removed when there are active sessions on the targets discovered by this address.

Resolution

Resolution: To resolve this issue, manually terminate the active sessions before removing the discovery address.

1. List the active iSCSI sessions: esxcli iscsi session list
   
   
2. Identify the Target Name (IQN) and Adapter from the list.
   
   
3. Remove the specific session: esxcli iscsi session remove --name=<target_name> --adapter=<adapter_name>
   
   
4. Alternatively, use the force flag to remove the discovery address and its associated sessions: esxcli iscsi adapter discovery sendtarget remove --adapter=<adapter_name> --address=<IP_address:port> --force

Additional Information

For additional information see How to remove iSCSI targets on ESXi