vSAN hard disk health status show as Evacuated or Evacuating
search cancel

vSAN hard disk health status show as Evacuated or Evacuating

book

Article ID: 395966

calendar_today

Updated On:

Products

VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

  • vSAN disk may show the status as 'Evacuated' / 'Evacuating' in disk management for a vSAN host.

  • vCenter Server displays an "Operational health" alert for a vSAN cluster.

  • Validate Health of Disk:
[Host-01:~] esxcli storage core device smart get -d naa.####
Parameter                    Value                Threshold    Worst    Raw
--------------------------------------------    -------------------------------    
Health Status                IMPENDING FAILURE    N/A          N/A      N/A
Media Wearout Indicator      86                   100          N/A      N/A
Write Error Count            0                    N/A          N/A      N/A
Head Error Count             916                  N/A          N/A      N/A
Power Cycle Count            0                    N/A          N/A      N/A
Reallocated Sector Count     0                    N/A          N/A      N/A
Drive Temperature            29                   N/A          N/A      N/A
Write Sectors TOT Count      1070746404638        N/A          N/A      N/A
Head Sectors TOT Count       2717017976057        N/A          N/A      N/A
Program Fail Count           247                  N/A          N/A      N/A
Erase Fail Count             0                    N/A          N/A      N/A
  • The alert persists even after a faulty physical cache or capacity drive has been replaced.

  • The newly inserted drive is visible but marked as "Ineligible" or "Unclaimed."

  • /var/run/log/vobd.log reports the disk to be unhealthy:
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.638Z In(14) vobd[2097860]:  [vSANCorrelator] 3558537147848us: [vob.vsan.lsom.diskunhealthy] vSAN device #### is unhealthy.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.638Z In(14) vobd[2097860]:  [vSANCorrelator] 3558664771456us: [esx.problem.vob.vsan.lsom.diskunhealthy] vSAN device #### is unhealthy.

Environment

  • VMware ESXi 7.x

  • VMware ESXi 8.x

Cause

Disk/disk group gets evacuated due to impending failure on disk. When vSAN detects an impending capacity disk failure (known as Dying Disk Handling or DDH), it automatically begins to proactively evacuate the data from the affected disk/disk groups to healthy disks/disk groups in the cluster. This process is designed to prevent data loss and maintain accessibility.

When Deduplication and Compression are enabled, the entire disk group acts as a single logical unit. If a cache disk is replaced without first clearing the old disk group configuration, the vSAN metadata continues to expect the original hardware ID, preventing the new disk from being claimed.

  1. Entire Disk Group Evacuation

    • This occurs if the impending failure is reported for the Cache disk in a vSAN Hybrid or vSAN All-Flash cluster.

    • This also occurs if the impending failure is reported for any capacity disk in that disk group in an All-Flash cluster where de-duplication is enabled.

  2. Affected Capacity Disk Evacuation

    • This occurs if the impending failure is reported for a capacity disk in a vSAN Hybrid Cluster or an All-Flash cluster without de-duplication.

From the /var/run/log/vobd logs, the disk is reporting impending failure and suggest to replace the disk.

2025-11-20T06:30:43.256Z In(14) vobd[2098051]: [vSANCorrelator] 3141556237us: [vob.vsan.lsom.devicewithsmartfailure] vSAN device naa.#### smart health status is impending failure. It will be evacuated and unmounted, consider replacing it.
2025-11-20T06:30:43.256Z In(14) vobd[2098051]: [vSANCorrelator] 3742867710us: [esx.problem.vob.vsan.lsom.devicewithsmartfailure] vSAN device naa.#### smart health status is impending failure. It will be evacuated and unmounted, consider replacing it.
2025-11-20T06:30:43.262Z In(14) vobd[2098051]: [vSANCorrelator] 3141561996us: [vob.vsan.lsom.diskunhealthy] vSAN device #### is unhealthy.
2025-11-20T06:30:43.262Z In(14) vobd[2098051]: [vSANCorrelator] 3141657213us: [esx.problem.vob.vsan.lsom.diskunhealthy] vSAN device #### is unhealthy.

Resolution

To clear the stale metadata and rebuild the disk group:

  1. Place the affected ESXi host in Maintenance Mode. Select Ensure Accessibility for data evacuation.
  2. Navigate to Cluster > Configure > vSAN > Disk Management.
  3. Locate the impacted host, select the Unhealthy disk group, and click Remove.
  4. Once the group is removed, click Create Disk Group.
  5. Select the newly replaced flash drive as the Cache tier and assign the respective capacity drives.
  6. Exit Maintenance Mode.
  7. Navigate to Cluster > Monitor > vSAN > Skyline Health and click Retest to confirm the alert has cleared.

Additional Information

Output showed overall health status of the disk as "EVACUATED,SMART_DISK_FAILURES".

UUID: ####
Name: naa.####
Owner: ####
Version: 20
Disk Group:  ####
Disk Tier: Capacity
SSD: true
In Cmmds: true
In Vsi: true
Fault Domain: N/A
Model: xxxxxx
Encryption: false
Compression: false
Deduplication: false
Dedup Ratio: N/A
Overall Health: yellow(EVACUATED,SMART_DISK_FAILURES)
Metadata Health: green
Operational Health: yellow
Congestion Health:
State: green
Congestion Value: 0
Congestion Area: none
All Congestion Fields:
Space Health:
State: green
Capacity: 1788.49 GB
Used: 29.60 GB
Reserved: 2.21 GB

Powered by Wolken Software