Error message: "Some of the disks of the virtual machine "VM_NAME" on host "HOSTNAME" failed to load. The information present for them in the virtual machine configuration may be incomplete" when powering on the VM.

Products

• VMware

Issue/Introduction

• Upon attempting to power on the virtual machine, the following warning message is observed.

"Some of the disks of the virtual machine "VM_NAME" on host "HOSTNAME" failed to load. The information present for them in the virtual machine configuration may be incomplete"

• The above warning can also be seen via the VM Summary tab as well.
  
  
• Virtual disk size shows as 0 MB in the vSphere Client.
• In ESXi vobd.log, the following events occur:
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.795Z: [scsiCorrelator] 10822206148769us: [esx.problem.scsi.device.state.permanentloss.noopens] Permanently inaccessible device: naa.#### has no more opens. It is now safe to unmount datastores (if any): "DS_Name" and delete the device
  

Environment

• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x / 8.x /9.x
• Standalone or Clustered ESXi hosts
• Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI Storage
• Local internal disks

Cause

This issue occurs when the backing LUN/device is no longer presented to the ESXi host. If a LUN is unmapped from the storage array without being properly detached from the host, the device enters a Permanent Device Loss (PDL) state. The host cannot read the capacity or metadata of the disks, leading to an incomplete VM configuration load.

In ESXi logs at /var/run/log/vobd.log, the following events are observed:

YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.795Z: [scsiCorrelator] 10822206148769us: [esx.problem.scsi.device.state.permanentloss.noopens] Permanently inaccessible device: naa.######################### has no more opens. It is now safe to unmount datastores (if any): "DS_Name" and delete the device 

Resolution

 

Engage your storage admin/vendor and check the following:

1. Check the backing array and ensure the backing LUN still exists
2. Check the presentation of the LUN and ensure all expected hosts that should have access are listed
3. Check for any potential hardware issues
4. If the backing device is an internal disk on the host and there is no evidence of a hardware issue for the device you can try a reboot of the host with a flee drain to see if the disk comes back. However the hardware vendor should still be engaged to vet the health of the hardware.
5. Restore from Backup: If the underlying LUN was formatted or deleted at the storage level, data loss has occurred. Recover the VM from the latest available backup.

Note: Ensure to follow proper procedure when removing a LUN from an ESXi host

Additional Information