vSphere Configuration Profiles (VCP) UI does not show device or volume information after storage device with VMFS volume is mounted to the host

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

Upon attaching a storage device formatted with a VMFS volume to an ESX host, the volume is automatically mounted on the host but device or volume information is not displayed in VCP.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.3+

VCF 9.0+

Cause

Storage array devices are typically shared between multiple hosts. VMFS is a distributed filesystem. Say a device D1 is shared between hosts H1, H2, and H3. If a datastore is created on shared device D1 on H1, it will automatically be mounted on the other two hosts H2 and H3. When creating a datastore on a device, you can either specify a datastore name or a default name will be assigned (Please note that this volume label is 'stamped' on the storage device persistently). The hosts sharing this device are able to automatically mount the VMFS volume and see the label of the VMFS volume and other attributes of the volume.

The VMFS volume label is a volume attribute of the VMFS volume and not a cluster level configuration. There is no provision currently in ESX or VC to refer the same VMFS volume by a different label on the hosts that are mounting it.

When VMFS volume is formatted on a device, the volume label is not automatically written to the ConfigStore on the host upon attaching the device. VCP only displays information that is captured in ConfigStore, so does not display this information in the UI.  Only non default or modified values are written to ConfigStore and will be consumed by VCP.  If any configuration property changes (e.g. display name of a device) to a non-default value, it will be written to the ConfigStore and displayed in VCP.

Note: If the device containing a VMFS volume gets added to another host outside the cluster, the volume gets mounted on that host as the same volume label.  If the volume is renamed through any host mounting the volume, the new name gets propagated to all the hosts mounting the volume.  Currently, it is unsupported to have separate labels for the same VMFS volume on two different hosts, but having a separate display name of a device (hosting the VMFS volume) on different hosts is supported.

Resolution

If the default configuration for block storage devices is used, the configuration will not be displayed in VCP.  If changes to host specific properties (e.g. display name of a device) on a particular host to non-default values, these will be displayed in the VCP UI.