No connection to vVOL storage, ESXi vvold service does not start

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Vasa Provider is Online in vCenter
  
  
• On ESXi hosts, all vVOL commands do not return any data - all outputs are empty:
  esxcli storage vvol vasaprovider list
esxcli storage vvol protocolendpoint list
esxcli storge vvol storagecontainer list
  
  
• ping <VASA_Provider_IP> is successful
  
  
• nc -z <VASA_Provider_IP> <portid> succeeds
  
  
• /etc/init.d/vvold start reports
  vvold stopped after start, there are no vVol datastores present on the host

 

 

 

 

 

 

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

This issue is generally caused by a configuration issue on storage side preventing the ESXi hosts from accessing the vVOL storage.

Resolution

Engage storage vendor.