customer server takes about an hour to connect - ESXi host slow in booting after upgrade to ESXi 8.0 U3

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
After upgrading from ESXi 6.7U3 to 8.0.3 EP3, the host experienced a delay in boot process and storage was inaccessible.

Followed KB article to resolve storage accessibility issue (Slow boot after upgrading to ESXi 8.0 U3 - Timeout during iSCSI device discovery phase), even though boot process still takes a long time.

Even with the latest NIC card driver/firmware still the issue same.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0 U3

Resolution

Issue resolved by followed the below:
=> Updated NIC firmware

=> Used of Dell OEM A004 ISO version (had A003)

=> Followed KB: https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/385971/ workaround to set ISCSI static targets.

=> In addition to this we can see "echo "provMemOveride:vmware_base=120"" in /etc/sfcb/sfcb.cfg log 

when echoed into the file /etc/sfcb/sfcb.cfg, modifies the configuration for SFCB (Small Footprint CIM Broker), which is the WBEM (Web-Based Enterprise Management) provider on VMware ESXi.

and try disables the WBEM service on the ESXi host:

esxcli system wbem set -e 0

after that enables the WBEM service on the ESXi host:

esxcli system wbem set -e 1

 

Additional Information

Slow boot after upgrading to ESXi 8.0 U3 - Timeout during iSCSI device discovery phase: https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleNumber=385971