Unable to remove vSAN capacity or cache drive through UI

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• When attempting to remove a capacity disk from the vCenter UI, the following error message is displayed:
  
  General vSAN error. vSAN disk data evacuation resource check has failed for disk or disk-group vsan:UUID (Disk UUID) with mode noAction on hostname. Go to vSAN Data Migration Pre-Check page for more details.
  
  
  
  

Environment

VMware vSAN 7.x
VMware vSAN 8.x

Resolution

• Place the affected host in Maintenance Mode with Ensure Accessibility from vCenter UI.
• SSH to the ESXi host and the run the command 'esxcli vsan storage list' to fetch the Device name and vSAN UUID.
  
    # esxcli vsan storage list

naa.#################:
Device: naa.#################
Display Name: naa.##################
Is SSD: true
VSAN UUID: ########-####-####-####-########
VSAN Disk Group UUID: ########-####-####-####-########
VSAN Disk Group Name: naa.##############
Used by this host: true
In CMMDS: true
On-disk format version: 5
Deduplication: true
Compression: true
Checksum: 5356031598619392290
Checksum OK: true
Is Capacity Tier: true
Encryption: false
DiskKeyLoaded: false

• For cache disks removal, the entire disk group need to be removed. 
  
  # esxcli vsan storage remove -u <VSAN Disk UUID>
  
  Note: For a cache disk the VSAN UUID and VSAN Disk Group UUID fields will match
  Output will report: Is Capacity Tier as false
• For capacity disk removal from disk group:
  • If De-duplication is enabled on the vSAN cluster, it is not possible to remove the capacity disk from the disk group. Need to remove the entire disk group.
# esxcli vsan storage remove -u <VSAN Disk Group UUID>


  • If De-duplication is not enabled on the vSAN cluster, the capacity disk can removed from the disk group using below commands.
    # esxcli vsan storage remove -d <Display Name>
# esxcli vsan storage remove -u <UUID of the capacity disk>

Note: Always double check the UUID's before running the command.

Additional Information

How to manually manage and configure a vSAN disk group using esxcli commands