Storage Sensors on ESXi Host with LSI MegaRAID reports "Unable to Report Physical Element Status"

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0

Issue/Introduction

• When navigating to Host > Monitor > Hardware Health > Storage Sensors in the vSphere Client, the storage information may display incorrect or unknown values if the host is using LSI MegaRAID drivers.
• This issue persists even after disabling and re-enabling the CIM provider:  https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/313877

example:

$esxcli storage core adapter list
HBA Name  Driver    Link State  UID                   Capabilities  Description
--------  --------  ----------  --------------------  ------------  -----------
vmhbax   lsi_mr3   link-n/a    sas.xxxx       (0000:3b:00.0) Broadcom / LSI MegaRAID Tri-Mode SAS3516  

$esxcli system wbem provider list
**Name              Enabled  Loaded**
----------------  -------  ------
lsi               true     true       
sfcb_base         true     true
... 

Environment

ESXi 7.0.x and 8.0.x

Cause

Storage hardware health is solely supported for LSI in versions 6.5 and 6.7. Notably, reporting storage health from LSI is unsupported in 7.0.x and higher versions of the ESXi.

Resolution

Monitoring of LSI HBA storage health will no longer be actively supported within the affected ESXi 7.0 version, marking it as a deprecated feature. 

The latest ESXi 8.0 release and the previous 7.0 release, have confirmed the CIM deprecation, underscoring a pivotal shift in monitoring functionalities. Furthermore, it warrants attention that the CIM stack is slated for complete elimination in the forthcoming ESXi version 9.0.