vSAN update fails precheck due to physical disk operations health error
Article ID: 408230
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
When attempting to update or upgrade an ESXi host that is part of a vSAN cluster, the task fails during the precheck validation. The failure is caused by vSAN reporting one or more capacity disks as absent or missing.
You can verify this issue by navigating to the vSAN disk management view in the vSphere Client, where the affected diskgroup will show an "Absent vSAN disk" health status, as seen below:
Environment
VMware vSAN 7.x
VMware vSAN 8.x
Cause
The root cause of this precheck failure is a physical hardware issue with the capacity disk(s). The disks have failed and are no longer recognized by the storage controller, making them absent from the vSAN datastore. This unhealthy state prevents any host update operations from proceeding.
Resolution
To resolve this issue, the failed physical disk(s) must be replaced.
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Physically identify and remove the failed disk drive(s) from the ESXi host chassis. If remote management (like iDRAC/iLO) is unavailable, this will require physical access to the server.
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Install a new, compatible replacement disk of the same or greater size into the empty drive bay.
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Once the new disk is physically installed, add it to the vSAN disk group to replace the absent disk.
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After the disk has been added and the disk group is healthy, the disks will automatically rebalance the utilized data.
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Once the disks have been replaced, the updates can be resumed.
Additional Information
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