After reusing hosts from decommissioned vSAN cluster the new cluster contains unassociated objects
Article ID: 401955
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
After reusing hosts that were removed from a vSAN cluster, the cluster they are added to contains a number of unassociated objects with missing paths and references to incorrect datastores.
Looking at output from "esxcli vsan debug object list" shows many objects which are healthy, but have paths showing as
/vmfs/volumes/vsan:521cfa72f6202c14-################/appvolumes/packages/<vmdk_name>.vmdk (Missing)
Looking at normal expected objects we see path attributes with correct datastore and not Missing state.
/vmfs/volumes/vsan:5236cdd44cf208fa-################/appvolumes/packages/<vmdk_name>.vmdk (Exists)
Environment
vSAN 7.x
vSAN 8.x
Cause
The disk groups were not removed from the hosts when the hosts were decommissioned from the previous cluster. This leaves data components available related to objects from the old cluster which are picked up by vSAN in the new cluster.
This is demonstrated by the previous vSAN datastore ID present in the object Path attribute:
Looking at output from "esxcli vsan debug object list" shows many objects which are healthy, but have paths showing an incorrect datastore
/vmfs/volumes/vsan:521cfa72f6202c14-################/appvolumes/packages/<vmdk_name>.vmdk (Missing)
Looking at normal expected objects we see path attributes with correct datastore.
/vmfs/volumes/vsan:5236cdd44cf208fa-################/appvolumes/packages/<vmdk_name>.vmdk (Exists)
Resolution
Prevent the issue from occurring by following KB 392097 when decommissioning a vSAN cluster or KB 326861 when removing a single node from a vSAN cluster.
To address the problem you may choose to perform one of the following to remove the inaccessible objects:
- Storage vMotion any VMs or data required out of the vSAN datastore and decommission the vSAN datastore in the new cluster using KB 392097 and then re-enable vSAN and recreate the disk groups.
- Storage vMotion any VMs or data required out of the vSAN datastore, place all hosts into maintenance mode with the No data migration option, remove all vSAN disk groups, recreate the disk groups.
- Open a case to work with support to delete the unassociated objects manually.
Additional Information
If there are inaccessible objects please see After reusing hosts from decommissioned vSAN cluster the new cluster reports inaccessible objects in the vSAN object health alert.
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