A node is in vSAN Decommission State, even though the UI shows the ESXi host is not in Maintenance Mode.

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

vSAN Decommission State and ESXi maintenance mode are 2 tasks that run together but are parallel tasks:

- ESXi maintenance mode:

• Allows administrators to perform maintenance on an ESXi host.
• Temporarily isolates the host compute resources from the vSphere cluster.
• Prevents new virtual machines from being powered on on it.

- vSAN Decommission State:

• Includes evacuating data from a host to other hosts in the cluster managing data redundancy across the cluster while taking that host offline for maintenance.

Environment

VMware vSAN (All Versions)

Resolution

• To check if a vSAN node is in maintenance mode even though ESXi doesn't seem to be, the command below can be used:

esxcli vsan cluster get

Example of output:

[root@esx:~] esxcli vsan cluster get
Cluster Information
   Enabled: true
   Current Local Time: 20##-0#-1#T1#:1#:39Z
   Local Node UUID: 65###80c-f##e-c##8-5##6-a08######d4c
   Local Node Type: NORMAL
   Local Node State: AGENT
   Local Node Health State: HEALTHY
   Sub-Cluster Master UUID: 65###80c-f##e-c##8-5##6-a08######d4c
   Sub-Cluster Backup UUID: 65###53e-a##0-8##a-0##f-b83#####f1a
   Sub-Cluster UUID: 52###505-e##6-3##3-c##6-bc4######696
   Sub-Cluster Membership Entry Revision: 1
   Sub-Cluster Member Count: 2
   Sub-Cluster Member UUIDs: 65###80c-f##e-c##8-5##6-a08######d4c, 66###0d0-3##4-7##9-e##e-005######c3b
   Sub-Cluster Member HostNames: esx.example.local, esx2.example.local
   Unicast Mode Enabled: true
   Maintenance Mode State: ON
   Config Generation: fe###17b-4##7-4##7-b##d-fcf######085 1#6 20##-0#-1#T0#:4#:3#.239
   Mode: REGULAR
   vSAN ESA Enabled: false
[root@esx:~]

 

• To resolve the inconsistency between the vSAN Decommission State and ESXi maintenance mode, place the host into maintenance mode with No Data Migration either via the  host UI or vCenter UI, and when the task is completed, exit maintenance mode.

Additional Information

vSAN Health Service -- Host Maintenance Mode is in sync with vSAN Node Decommission State