iSCSI Adapter Cannot Be Disabled on ESXi Host

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

A transition is underway from the iSCSI protocol to Fibre Channel (FC), involving a reconfiguration of storage connectivity.

Network port bindings associated with the iSCSI adapter had already been removed. However, an error occurred when attempting to disable the iSCSI software adapter.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

The iSCSI adapter could not be disabled because active iSCSI sessions were still present due to residual static and dynamic discovery entries, causing the system to block adapter removal.

Resolution

All static and dynamic discovery targets were removed from the iSCSI software adapter. 

Remove Dynamic or Static iSCSI Targets

• Remove iSCSI servers connected to your ESXi host.
• In the  vSphere Client, navigate to the ESXi host.
• Click the Configure tab.
• Under Storage, click  Storage Adapters, and select the iSCSI adapter to modify from the list.
• Switch between  Dynamic Discovery and Static Discovery
• Select an iSCSI server to remove and click Remove
• Rescan the iSCSI adapter.

Accessed the ESXi Host Client UI and, following confirmation, both discovery configurations were successfully deleted.

After the discovery entries were removed, the iSCSI software adapter was successfully disabled.

Additional Information

References KB : Accessing the same storage through different transport protocols, such as iSCSI and Fibre Channel is unsupported