LUN with existing VMFS partition cannot be mounted or resignatured

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Tasks to mount or resignature a datastore fails.
• When trying the operation in the command line, you receive the error "Unable to complete Sysinfo operation. Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.: I/O error".
• In the vmkernel log file, you see an error as the below:

2024-07-03T06:05:25.721Z In(182) vmkernel: cpu116:2098869)ScsiDeviceIO: 4633: Cmd(0x45daf8952bc0) 0x89, CmdSN 0x4 from world 2100289 to dev "naa.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x4 0x8 0x0

Where naa.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx is the ID of the backing LUN of the impacted datastore.

Cause

Decoding the error presented in the symptoms:

Host Status        [0x0]    OK    This status is returned when there is no error on the host side. This is when you will see if there is a status for a Device or Plugin. It is also when you will see Valid sense data instead of Possible sense Data.
Device Status    [0x2]    CHECK_CONDITION    This status is returned when a command fails for a specific reason. When a CHECK CONDITION is received, the ESX storage stack will send out a SCSI command 0x3 (REQUEST SENSE) in order to get the SCSI sense data (Sense Key, Additional Sense Code, ASC Qualifier, and other bits). The sense data is listed after Valid sense data in the order of Sense Key, Additional Sense Code, and ASC Qualifier.
Plugin Status    [0x0]    GOOD    No error. (ESXi 5.x / 6.x only)
Sense Key        [0x4]    HARDWARE ERROR
Additional Sense Data    08/00    LOGICAL UNIT COMMUNICATION FAILURE

Resolution

The storage vendor should be engaged to check the condition of the LUN presenting the Hardware Error LOGICAL COMMUNICATION FAILURE.