Dead paths are not removed due to page 83 command response.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Datastore are inaccessible and hosts go to not responding state.
• Storage paths state is not updated and remain active.
• During DR test, we lose access to VMFS volumes.
• Multiple storage adapter rescans are required to clear inactive paths.
• We see below "page 83" messages in vmkernel logs :

WARNING: VMW_SATP_ALUA: satp_alua_getTargetPortInfo:160: Could not get page 83 INQUIRY data for path "vmhba64:C3:T0:L0" - Transient storage condition, suggest retry (195887294)
WARNING: VMW_SATP_ALUA: satp_alua_getTargetPortInfo:160: Could not get page 83 INQUIRY data for path "vmhba64:C3:T0:L1" - Transient storage condition, suggest retry (195887294)

Environment

ESX 7.0.x
ESX 8.0
ESX 8.0U1

Cause

While fetching target port information, the INQUIRY (page-83) command is sent to the target. In cases where the specified LUN is unmapped (resulting in a ghost LUN configuration), different targets are responding inconsistently.

Resolution

VMware by Broadcom engineering team is aware of this issue and code enhancement will be in the next upcoming vSphere 7.0 patch release( post ESXi 7.0.3q ,at the time of this KB)

This issue is not found in 8.0 update 2 and later version.