Disk group creation fails with 'General vSAN error'

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

Attempt to create a disk group fails with message 'General vSAN error'.
Diskgroups do get created however, 'Is cmmds: false' for all the disks when we do vdq -iH, indicating they are not being used by CMMDs
Once the diskgroups get created, an attempt wipe the partition on the disks in the disk group fails.

Environment

VMware VSAN

Cause

Host was re-purposed from another vSAN Cluster that had Encryption Enabled.
While vdq -iH shows 'Encryption: False', vmkernel.log shows the following repetitively indicating there is encryption:
KeyCache: ###: Trying to resolve key for keyId ########-####-####-####-############
KeyCache: ###: Request to populate ########-####-####-####-############ in keycache
KeyCache: ###: RPC_SendAndGetReply() reply result: Not found
KeyCache: ###: Did not find keyID ########-####-####-####-############ in key cache

Resolution

Before re-purposing a host that is part of vSAN Cluster that has Encryption enabled, we must:
Ensure that there isn't any association of the host with the KMS.
'Unmount' and 'Remove' the disk group from Disk Management of the vCenter.

If the above is not an option, we may resolve this by performing a security wipe (secure erase) on the drives using the server lifecycle management. Hardware vendor's assistance may be required to achieve this.