vSAN ESA cluster reports double/incorrect capacity usage and License Inventory Monitoring alarm

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

• Experiencing a discrepancy in reported storage usage on a newly deployed vSAN cluster. The cluster has no running virtual machines, and no disks have been removed. Despite this, the usage shows 112 TB, even though the total raw capacity is only 55.85 TB. 
• Active alarm in the vSphere GUI labeled "License inventory monitoring", which is related to the current licensing or usage reporting problem.

Environment

VMware vSAN 7.0.x ESA
VMware vSAN 8.0.x ESA

Cause

This was a new ESA cluster and initially disks were added that were not ESA compatible. Disks were removed and replaced but the configstore still retained information of the removed disks. Leading to vsan capacity reporting twice the available capacity.

 

Resolution

To resolve the issue user should:

1. Identify all disks currently tracked in the configstore: configstorecli config current get -c vsan -g system -k host_config

2. Compare this list against the active storage pool: esxcli vsan storagepool list

3. Remove the stale UUIDs: esxcli vsan storagepool remove -u <UUID>

4. Run configstorecli command again to verify the disk entry is indeed removed: configstorecli config current get -c vsan -g system -k host_config

 

The total license capacity usage should now reflect accurately the total physical disk capacity.