ESXi Host patch/upgrade using AutoDeploy stateless image on the local disk failed with the error "Method Faulty Summary. Error: [Errno 30] Read-only file system."

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Updating ESXi image through Auto Deploy to the local M.2 disk via stateless caching (configured via the host profile). While remediating the host, the underlying disk enters read-only mode while the image/config schema loads.

• ESXi Host patch/upgrade using AutoDeploy stateless image on the local disk failed with the error "Method Faulty Summary. Error: [Errno 30] Read-only file system."

• Manually deleted the partitions on the local disk, and then deploying the image via the host profile succeeded.

• Observed the Read-Only error from ESXi host syslog
  
  /var/run/log/syslog.log

YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:49Z In(14) hostprofile[2102492]: opID=166a738f-01-ec-86ce: Calling RemediateConfig for profile CachingProfile
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:49Z In(14) hostprofile[2102492]: opID=166a738f-01-ec-86ce: Post boot: stateless to disk <Local Disk Name>. With overwriteVmfs:True.
.
.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:11Z In(14) HostProfileManager[2102492]: <Local Disk Name>: partitioning boot disk (keepDatastore=False, createDatastore=True)
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:11Z Er(11) hostprofile[2102492]: opID=166###8f-01-ec-86ce: **Exception while applying host config. Exception: [****Errno 30] Read-only file system**
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:11Z Wa(12)[+] hostprofile[2102492]: 
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:11Z Wa(12) hostprofile[2102492]: opID=166###8f-01-ec-86ce: Adding missing key OSError.summary
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:11Z Wa(12) hostprofile[2102492]: opID=166###8f-01-ec-86ce: excObj is of unknown type: <class 'OSError'>

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi Host using AutoDeploy

Cause

The reported issue due to overwriteVMFS is set to True, which attempts to unmount the disk and recreate the VFFS.

Resolution

The resolution to fix the reported issue to follow one of the options that is feasible and retry ESXi patching/upgrade using AutoDeploy to complete.

1. Turnoff/Disable overwriteVMFS on datastore

OR

2. Modify the firstdisk string to switch to other disks if the host has multiple disks.

Additional Information

Ref KB: How to preserve VMFS datastore while upgrading/Installing ESXi host