Disks not showing up for vSAN deployment after decommissioning Cisco "HyperFlex"
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Disks not showing up for vSAN deployment after decommissioning Cisco "HyperFlex"

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Article ID: 395027

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Updated On: 04-23-2025

Products

VMware vSphere ESXi VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

After decommissioning Cisco "HyperFlex" when attempting to deploy vSAN no usable disks are available.  When viewing the Storage adapters in vCenter not all adapters are present and disks are not shown. 

Environment

VMware ESXI (All Versions)

VMware vSAN (All Versions)

Cause

Cisco HyperFlex uses VMDirectPath I/O (PCI passthrough) to pass the PCI devices to the the hyperflex deployment. The Storage controllers are set as PCI Passthrough "enabled"  and will prevent the ESXI host form utilizing them Direclty. 

VMDirectPath I/O (PCI passthrough) enables direct assignment of hardware PCI Functions to virtual machines. This gives the virtual machine access to the PCI Functions with minimal intervention from the ESXi host, potentially improving performance. It is suitable for performance critical workloads such as graphics acceleration for virtual desktops, such as VMware View vDGA, and high data-rate networking such as those found in enterprise class telecommunications equipment. It works particularly well with PCI devices supporting SR-IOV technology, as each virtual function in the device can be assigned to a separate virtual machine.

Resolution

Toggle Passthrough "Off"  to allow for the ESXI host to utilize the PCI devices. 

  1. Select an ESX\ESXi host from the Inventory of VMware vSphere Client.
  2. In the Configuration tab, select Hardware PCI devices . 
  3. Under Passthrough-enabled devices tab, select the PCI device and then Toggle Passthrough

 

After this the devices should be listed under storage adapters. 

Reference KB

vSphere VMDirectPath I/O and Dynamic DirectPath I/O: Requirements for Platforms and Devices