ESXi Hosts Report NFS shares as Inaccessible

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

 The esxcli storage nfs list command shows the affected NFS shares with Accessible status as false, despite Mounted being true.

[root@esxhost:~] esxcli storage nfs list

Volume Name  Host         Share       Vmknic  Accessible  Mounted  Connections  Read-Only  isPE  Hardware Acceleration
-----------  -----------  ----------  ------  ----------  -------  -----------  ---------  -----  ---------------------
TEST_1       17*.3*.3*.*    /TEST_1     None         false       true           1       false     false         Unknown
TEST_123     17*.3*.3*.*   /TEST_123   None     false       true           1       false     false         Unknown

Environment

VMware vSphere 7.x

VMware vSphere 8.x

Cause

The NFS datastores appear as inaccessible due to network connectivity issues between the ESXi host and the NFS storage. Specifically, packet loss is observed when pinging the NFS storage IP address from the ESXi host, indicating an unstable or degraded network connection.

[root@ESX:~] vmkping -I vmk1 172.**.**.* -d -s 1472 -c 2000 -i 0.01
PING 172.**.**.* (172.**.**.*): 1472 data bytes

172.**.**.* ping statistics ---
2000 packets transmitted, 20 packets received, 99% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 0.223/0.261/0.289 ms

High number of CRC errors and  Transmit carrier errors appear under NIC statistics .

[root@ESX:~] esxcli network nic stats get -n vmnic1

NIC statistics for vmnic1
   Packets received: 1025101229
   Packets sent: 502874630
   Bytes received: 419208816198
   Bytes sent: 6972631455170
   Receive packets dropped: 0
   Transmit packets dropped: 0
   Multicast packets received: 13548456
   Broadcast packets received: 50838757
   Multicast packets sent: 238573
   Broadcast packets sent: 536
   Total receive errors: 626429
   Receive length errors: 0
   Receive over errors: 0
   Receive CRC errors: 626429
   Receive frame errors: 0
   Receive FIFO errors: 0
   Receive missed errors: 0
   Total transmit errors: 146293
   Transmit aborted errors: 0
   Transmit carrier errors: 146293
   Transmit FIFO errors: 0
   Transmit heartbeat errors: 0
   Transmit window errors: 0

Resolution

Engage the hardware vendor and the physical network team in order to address the packet loss and CRC errors observed on physical Nic.