vSAN nodes cluster partitioned.

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Below alert appears on the skyline health check,
  
  
  
  
• 3-node stretched vSAN cluster partitioned after running the cluster shutdown manual script during a planned power down and power up activity.
  
  
  
  
• Ping fails between the hosts.

Environment

VMware vSAN 7.x

VMware vSAN 8.x

Cause

• Valid VMkernel adapters need to be configured for the host communication. If no VMkernel adapter is configured, the cluster partition is expected.
  
  
• If there are any hardware issues observed on vmnic's configured for the vSAN traffic, then the partition can happen:
  
  
  
  In the above command, we observe that the vmnic2 which is being used for vSAN is showing down.

Resolution

• Involve the hardware vendor to get the hardware issues on the physical NICs resolved. Once the hardware issue is resolved the NIC status should show up:
  
  
  
  
• Configure the vSAN networking by adding a VMkernel adapter for vSAN using the below article:
  
  Configuring VMkernel Networking for vSAN
  
  Note: If unable to add the vSAN tag to the configured VMkernel adapter from GUI, the same can be done from cli using the below command:
  
  esxcli network ip interface tag add --interface-name=vmk0 --tagname=Management
  
  
• The cluster partition issue will be resolved after the network configuration is completed successfully.