Storage devices not actively in-use are not auto-discovered after an unmap or unplug operation

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
When storage devices attached to HBAs using the lsi_msgpt3 driver are hot removed (unplugged) or logical devices unmapped through HBA tools, you see this symptom:

The devices may not disappear immediately but may take up to 5 minutes (the path background eval time) to get removed.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7

Cause

This issue occurs when the devices see no I/Os after the unplug operation as the ESXi host detects the unplug on the first I/O to this device after the unplug event. In case a new device is hot added and get the same target ID and LUN ID reported to the ESXi host, then the new device may not be discovered until the old PSA device has been removed.

Resolution

This is a known issue affecting VMware ESXi 6.0.x, 6.5.x and 6.7.x.

Currently, there is no resolution.

Workaround:
To work around this issue, do a manual storage rescan on the affected HBA.