After upgrading ESXi from 6.7 to 7.0, the boot process stuck at "vmkbft loaded successfully"

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0

Issue/Introduction

• After upgrading from ESXi 6.7 to ESXi 7.0, the boot process stuck at "vmkbft loaded successfully"
  
  
  
  
• Error in /var/log/vmkernel.log in ESXi host

  cpu4:2098010)Activating Jumpstart plugin fcoe-config.
  cpu16:2098380)Loading module vmkfbft ...
  cpu16:2098380)Elf: 2101: module vmkfbft has license VMware
  cpu16:2098380)vmkfbft: vmkfbftEnumerateFbftStructure:89: Did not find any FBFT header, status 0xbad0003:VMK_NOT_FOUND.
  cpu16:2098380)WARNING: FBFT not enabled
  cpu16:2098380)Mod: 4962: Initialization of vmkfbft succeeded with module ID 67.
  cpu16:2098380)vmkfbft loaded successfully.
  cpu0:2097990)User: 3173: jumpstart: wantCoreDump:jumpstart signal:11 exitCode:0 coredump:disabled
  cpu4:2098010)Jumpstart plugin fcoe-config activation failed: fcoe-config->start() failed: error while executing the cli 

 

 

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7

Cause

FCOE is not supported in ESXi 7.0 prod environments and seems to be causing the issues during boot. Refer Configuration Guidelines for Software FCoE

Resolution

Disable the FCOE before the upgrade

Follow the below steps:

1. SSH to ESXi host as root user
2. View FCoE config
   • In ESXi 6.7

     esxcli fcoe nic list

   • In ESXi 7.0

     configstorecli config current get -c esx -g storage_fcoe -k fcoe_activation_nic_policies

3. Disable the FCoE config
   • In ESXi 6.7

     esxcli fcoe nic disable -n <vmnic>

     Run this command against all vmnics

      

   • In ESXi 7.0

     configstorecli config  current delete -c esx -g storage_fcoe -k fcoe_activation_nic_policies --all