Virtual machine DB lost access to iSCSI target service with error"Connection to the target was lost. The initiator will attempt to retry the connection"

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Virtual machine SQL DB lost access to iSCSI target service with below error on guest OS under "Event viewer"

Event ID 20: Connection to the target was lost. The initiator will attempt to retry the connection.

Event ID 43: Target failed to respond in time for a login request.

• On VC UI below warnings are observed under "Monitor>Events" when placing host in maintenance mode or migrating the virtual machine.

Environment

VMware vSAN 7.x
VMware vSAN 8.x

Cause

I/O Owner hosts responsible for handling I/O to the iSCSI Target lost the ownership at the same time.

In /var/run/log/vitd.log

2025-06-25T00:11:03.594Z vitd[2100540]: Thread-0x49205ca700 ##.###.##.01 (iqn.19##-##.com.#####.com): VitdLoginRedirect: Target(Gaming-iSCSI-Target) still in kernel, but current host is already lost ownership

2025-06-25T00:11:03.594Z vitd[2100540]: Thread-0x49205db700 ##.###.##.02 (iqn.19##-##.com.#####.com): VitdLoginRedirect: Target(Gaming-iSCSI-Target) still in kernel, but current host is already lost ownership

Resolution

To ensure high availability of the vSAN iSCSI target, configure multipath support for your iSCSI application, you can use the IP addresses of two or more hosts to configure MPIO.

Configuring multipath from initiator side build two more paths to different nodes in case one node in maintenance mode so as to achieve high availability.

Refer the below article to setup the MPIO.

Using SQL Server Failover Clustering with vSAN iSCSI Target Service: Guidelines for supported configurations

Multi-Paths IO(MPIO) Setting Recommendation for VMware vSAN iSCSI Target Service