ESXi upgrade failing with "Unable to find device with name"

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Attempting to upgrade ESXi from command line (esxcli) the process is failing with:

Unable to find device with name

 

esxupdate.log contains entries similar to the below (notice the device name is empty):

WARNING: Boot device is not found, skip boot disk size check .. ... INFO: runcommand called with: args = '['/bin/localcli', '--formatter=json', 'storage', 'core', 'device', 'list', '--exclude-offline', '--device', '' ]'

 

vmkernel.log contains entries similar to:

YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.ZZZZ cpu24:XXXXXXX)Partition: 556: Read of GPT entries (hdrlba=1) failed on "mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0": I/O error YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.ZZZZ cpu24:XXXXXXX)Partition: 683: Read from primary gpt table failed on "mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0". YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.ZZZZ cpu24:XXXXXXX)ScsiDeviceIO: 4167: Cmd(0x45d9815923c8) 0x28, CmdSN 0x3 from world 2098207 to dev "mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0" failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x3 0x11 0x0 Medium Error, LBA: 2 YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.ZZZZ cpu24:XXXXXXX)ALERT: Failed to find boot device after 120 seconds

 

 

Environment

ESXi v7

Cause

Boot device I/O errors.

Boot device is corrupt.

Resolution

Engage OEM to get the boot device checked and/or replaced.

Re-install ESXi.

 

Additional Information

Similar situation, but where I/O errors manifest during the esxupdate in progress: ESXi Upgrade failed with mpx.vmhba error.