"Turn Off vSAN" is not to be used to shut down a vSAN cluster.

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

When shutting down a vSAN cluster, should the "Shutdown Cluster" wizard fail DO NOT click on "Turn Off vSAN".
"Turn Off vSAN" is to disable all vSAN services on the cluster, as the below screenshot points out when you click on "Turn Off vSAN", not to power down the ESXi hosts in the cluster.



If you use "Turn Off vSAN" while the cluster is shutting down, upon powering up the cluster vSAN will show as disabled in vCenter and possibly at the host level depending on how far in the disable process it gets before the hosts shut down.

Resolution

If you run into any issues shutting down the vSAN cluster see if one of the below KBs can assist in resolving the issue.

• vSAN Cluster shutdown wizard doesn't work when using vCenter HA (326818)
• vSAN Cluster Shutdown wizard fails with vmodl.fault.HostNotReachable (317840)
• How to handle inconsistent cluster power status in vSAN shutdown workflow (315520)
• The vSAN cluster shutdown workflow will fail with error "'NoneType' object is not iterable" (317857)
• When shutting down vSAN stretched cluster with witness traffic sepration using the Cluster Shutdown Wizard it fails with "Operation timed out" (318129)

If none of the above KBs resolves/matches your issue then open a case with vSAN Support for further investigation.