vSAN Health Service - Data Protection - vSAN data protection service health

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

This article explains the purpose and details of vSAN data protection service health check and provides details on why it might report the error and how to fix the error state.

Environment

VMware vSAN 9.0

Resolution

Q: What does the 'vSAN data protection service health' do?

It checks the data protection service health and its connection status with vCenter server when vSAN data protection is enabled on at least one of the clusters in vCenter server. 

Q: What does it mean when it is in an error state?

Either the vSAN data protection service is down or communication issue is detected with the vCenter Server. Appliance health data is like a heartbeat sent to vSAN health service every 30 seconds indicating that vSAN data protection service is alive and kicking. If vSAN data protection service fails to send the heartbeat in regular intervals the last heartbeat must expire after 1 min and vSAN health service must indicate that the vSAN data protection service down event to vSAN Health.

Q: How does one troubleshoot and fix the error state?

To fix the error state from this health check, you should diagnose and address the root cause of why the vSAN Data Protection service is down or why there is a communication issue between the vCenter Server and the vSAN Data Protection service.

There could be several reasons why the communication is lost. Follow the steps to diagnose issue.

1. Check that the appliance and the SnapService container are running and accessible.

2. Log in to data protection appliance VM and verify network connectivity to the vCenter server using network tools like ping or traceroute.

   /usr/bin/ping <vcenter-server-host>/usr/bin/traceroute <vcenter-server-host>

3. Ensure the data protection appliance isn't blocked by the vCenter server firewall ruleset from vCenter Server Management Interface URL: https://vcenter-server-host:5480

Screenshots

The overview card as error state:

The details table shows the overview status of data protection service and some guides to diagnose the issues: