vMotion failing with "The object or item referred to could not be found" on vSAN cluster with vSAN Health Service Alerts "vCenter state is authoritative" and "vSAN cluster partition"

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

vMotions Failing on a vSAN cluster with error "The object or item referred to could not be found" with corresponding vSAN Health Service Alerts "vCenter state is authoritative" and "vSAN cluster partition" 

Examples from vCetner. 

vCenter showing the migration error. 

vSAN errors  "vCenter state is authoritative" and "vSAN cluster partition" 

 

Environment

VMware vSAN (All Versions)

Cause

When attempting to migrate a VM to a Host in a vSAN partitioned state it will fail with "The object or item referred to could not be found" as that host does not have access to the backing data in the vsan cluster.

The "vCenter state is authoritative" check verifies that all hosts in the vSAN cluster are using the current managing vCenter Server as the source of truth for the cluster configuration, including the vSAN cluster membership list. During normal operation, the vCenter Server can publish the latest host membership list and update the configuration for all hosts in the cluster. This health check reports an error if vCenter Server configuration is not synchronized with a member host, and is no longer accepted as the source of truth.

When a host/hosts are not synchronized this can lead to auto-update failures for the configuration, including the vSAN cluster membership list which can lead to a network partition if not updated correctly. 

 

Resolution

To fix this problem, go to Cluster > Monitor > vSAN > Health. Select Cluster > vCenter state is authoritative, and click the corresponding button depending on Esxi Build in use:

"Update ESXi configuration" or "Remediate Inconsistent Configuration"

 

This will update the current vCenter to be the source of truth for the cluster configuration and update the unicast agent list to be current.   

 

If you still see a "vSAN cluster partition" after remediating "vCenter state is authoritative" review the following kb Troubleshooting vSAN Networking or open a new Case with VMware by Broadcom for additional assistace.