ESXi host is stuck during the boot process with the message activating storage-path-claim

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• While booting of an ESXi host, the host stuck at 'hpp loaded successfully. activating: storage-path-claim.'
• The ESXi host ILO/IDRAC screenshot shows as below.

         

 

Environment

• VMware vSphere 8.x

Cause

• Misconfigured network cabling and MTU mismatches on physical switches prevented ESXi hosts from reaching iSCSI targets, causing boot failure .

[root@VD:~] vmkping -I vmk1 17#.2#.1##.2## -d -s 8972
PING 17#.2#.1##.20#(17#.2#.1##.20#): 8972 data bytes

[root@VD:~] vmkping -I vmk2 17#.2#.1##.2##
PING 17#.2#.10#.2## (17#.2#.1##.2##): 56 data bytes
sendto() failed (Network is unreachable)

[root@VD:~] vmkping -I vmk2 17#.2#.10#.2##
PING 1##.2#.1##.2## (1##.2#.1##.2##): 56 data bytes
3 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss

[root@VD:~] vmkping -I vmk1 17#.2#.1##.2###
PING 17#.2#.10#.2## (17#.2#.1##.2##): 56 data bytes
sendto() failed (Network is unreachable)

Resolution

• Change the MTU setting on the physical network switch to 9216 bytes in order to establish communication between  hosts and   iSCSI storage using large MTU size .