Error Cannot remove discovery address (xx.xx.xx.xx:3260) as there are active sessions on the targets discovered by this address. when removing iSCSI target from ESX host

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

An administrator may encounter a message such as when attempting to remove a datastore from their environment:

An error occurred during host configuration. Operation failed, diagnostics report: Cannot remove discovery address (xx.xx.xx.xx:3260) as there are active sessions on the targets discovered by this address.

Environment

vSphere ESXi (all versions)

Cause

ESXi will not allow you to remove a volume that has currently open files on it. This can include...

• Powered on Virtual Machines
• Opened SSH sessions to a file (that is also open on that session) on that datastore
• Configured for VMKDUMP files

Resolution

Please ensure that no VMs or SSH sessions are active on the datastore. 

For VMKDUMP files, follow KB Permanently disable ESXi coredump file on how to remove these from the datastore: 

For VMKDUMP files, a reboot will be required after the changes have been made.