HBA is missing after ESXi reboot or upgrade

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• HBA adapter is missing after ESXi host reboot. 
• The HBA card is listed under "esxcli hardware pci list" and "lspci", but does not show as present in the UI or under "esxcli storage core adapter list"
• Below screenshots shows, Expected HBA's available,
  
•  Below screenshot has missing adapters, Missing Adapters - vmhba0 and vmhba1

- 

• The HBA fails to initialize as seen in the boot log (zcat /var/log/boot.gz| less)
  
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.189Z cpu39:2098197)WARNING: qlnativefc: (86:0.0): scsi(3): Mailbox command 0x2 timeout occurred. Scheduling ISP abort.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.189Z cpu39:2098197)qlnativefc: (86:0.0): scsi(3): qlnativefcMailboxCommand(3): **** FAILED
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.189Z cpu39:2098197)WARNING: qlnativefc: (86:0.0): scsi(3): scsi(3): Failed to initialize adapter - Adapter flags 2.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.x

 

Cause

This may arise due to driver/firmware issues, BIOS configuration or a HBA card hardware issue. 

Resolution

• Ensure that the drivers and firmware are updated to the latest supported versions.
  • Refer to Determining Network/Storage firmware and driver version in ESXi.
• Verify that the BIOS configuration aligns with hardware vendor recommendations.
• Engage the hardware vendor to check the health of the HBA card.
• Validate if controller is showing "passthrough" as disabled (iSCSI connections).

Additional Information

• If you are struggling to troubleshoot a loss of storage LUNs see: 
  • Troubleshooting LUN connectivity issues on ESXi hosts
  • Troubleshooting ESXi connectivity to iSCSI arrays using software initiators
  • Troubleshooting NFS datastore connectivity issues