Yellow warning icon for "Controller disk group mode is VMware certified" on ESXi host with HBA 355i Front controller due to outdated vSAN HCL DB

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms

The Skyline Health check reports a warning for "Controller disk group mode is VMware certified" on an ESXi host equipped with an HBA 355i Front controller.

Despite hardware compatibility, a yellow warning icon appears with the health check:

• vSAN HCL DB up-to-date - Error
• Controller disk group mode is VMware certified – Warning

Environment

VMware vSAN 7.x

Cause

The vSAN Health warning appears because the vSAN HCL database was outdated, and did not include the latest certification information.

Specifically, the controller HBA 355i Front was not yet listed as certified for both "All Flash" and "Hybrid" disk group modes in the local HCL DB.

Validate using https://vvs.broadcom.com/service/vsan/all.json

Example - 

"jsonUpdatedTime":"July 15, 2025, 1:16 AM PDT"

{"id":48356,"model":"HBA355i Front",

"ESXi 7.0 U3":{"vsanSupport":["All Flash:Pass-Through","Hybrid:Pass-Through"],"lsi_msgpt35":{"24.00.00.00-1OEM.700":

Resolution

• Manually update the vSAN HCL database Updating the vSAN HCL DB manually. 
• Once updated, re-run the Skyline Health check. The warning for "Controller disk group mode is VMware certified" should no longer appear.

Additional Information

• It is a false positive warning caused by outdated HCL metadata, not a true hardware support issue.

vSAN Skyline Health warning "Controller disk group mode is VMware certified"