VM residing in a vSAN cluster is inaccessible after improper replacement of the witness appliance in a stretch cluster

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

One or more objects are inaccessible after improper replacement of witness appliance in a stretch cluster

When running: 

esxcli vsan debug object list --health=inaccessible

Object layout looks similar to below:

Environment

VMware vSAN (All versions)

Cause

Quorum lost due to object not having enough votes to meet quorum, resulting in object going inaccessible

Please see the following for more info on inaccessible objects in vSAN: vSAN Health Service - Data Health - vSAN Object Health - inaccessible objects

Resolution

Open up a support SR with Broadcom for assistance with recovery analysis and options.