Error: There are no eligible capacity disks for vSAN during VCF bring-up

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

During a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) bring-up, the deployment fails at the 'Generate vCenter deployment Input data' phase. The system is unable to identify eligible capacity disks for the vSAN configuration.

Symptoms:

• The bring-up process stops at the Generate vCenter deployment Input data task with the warning 'There are no eligible capacity disks for vSAN'

• The /var/log/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/domainmanager.log contains 'NO_ELIGIBLE_CAPACITY_DISKS_FOR_VSAN' error:

ERROR [vcf_dm,6a6c3947cc57d1d5d4e4528280994ff6,4909] [c.v.e.s.o.model.error.ErrorFactory,dm-exec-1076]  [VR66MI] NO_ELIGIBLE_CAPACITY_DISKS_FOR_VSAN There are no eligible capacity disks for vSAN
com.vmware.evo.sddc.orchestrator.exceptions.OrchTaskException: There are no eligible capacity disks for vSAN

• Running vdq -qH | grep State shows disks are "Eligible for use by vSAN" but not claimed by the capacity tier.
  
  vdq-qH | grep State
                 State:  Eligible for use by vSAN
      StoragePoolState:  Eligible for use by Storage Pool
                 State:  Eligible for use by vSAN
      StoragePoolState:  Eligible for use by Storage Pool
                 State:  Ineligible for use by VSAN
      StoragePoolState:  Ineligible for use by Storage Pool
                 State:  Eligible for use by vSAN
      StoragePoolState:  Eligible for use by Storage Pool
                 State:  Eligible for use by vSAN
      StoragePoolState:  Eligible for use by Storage Pool
                 State:  Eligible for use by vSAN
      StoragePoolState:  Eligible for use by Storage Pool
                 State:  Eligible for use by vSAN
      StoragePoolState:  Eligible for use by Storage Pool
                 State:  Eligible for use by vSAN
      StoragePoolState:  Eligible for use by Storage Pool

• The issue is often seen with NVMe drive models such as SAMSUNG MZQL2960HCJR-00A07 or Micron 7450 MTFDKBA960TFR.

 

Environment

• VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1
• vSAN Original Storage Architecture (OSA)

Cause

VCF Cloud Builder requires all-flash vSAN disks to have the isCapacityFlash attribute enabled. If the hardware does not automatically present this tag, vSAN is unable to claim the disks for the capacity tier.

This can be verified using the command vdq -qH

Sample output:

                  Name:  eui.####
              VSANUUID:  ####
                 State:  Eligible for use by vSAN
                Reason:  None
      StoragePoolState:  Eligible for use by Storage Pool
     StoragePoolReason:  None
                IsSSD?:  1
      IsCapacityFlash?:  1
                IsPDL?:  0
              Size(MB):  915715
            FormatType:  512e
     IsVsanDirectDisk?:  0

Resolution

To resolve this issue, manually tag the intended capacity devices on each ESXi host:

1. Log in to the ESXi host via SSH.

2. Identify the device IDs for the intended capacity disks:

   vdq -qH

3. Add the capacity flash tag to the specific device:

   esxcli vsan storage tag add -d #### -t capacityFlash

4. Verify the tag is successfully applied:

   vdq -qH | grep IsCapacityFlash

5. Restart the VCF bring-up process from the Cloud Builder UI.

If the issue persists, see contact Broadcom Support

Additional Information

For more information on managing support cases, see Creating and Managing Broadcom Support Cases.

To speak with a customer representative or a Support Engineer, see Contact Support.