vSAN Upgrade Failed Due to Insufficient Locker Partition Space

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

An attempt to upgrade an ESXi host in a vSAN environment fails with an InstallationError indicating insufficient free space in the locker partition.

Method:

The upgrade was attempted using a command similar to:

esxcli software profile update -d /vmfs/volumes/vsanDatastore/_iso/VMware-VMvisor-Installer-8.0.0.update03-24674464.x86_64-########-A06.zip -p ###-ESXi_803.24674464-A06

Error:

The upgrade fails with an error similar to:

[InstallationError]
VMware_locker_tools-light_12.5.1.24649672-24659227: VIB tools-light requires 227 MB free space in the locker partition to be safely installed, however the pa
cause = VMware_locker_tools-light_12.5.1.24649672-24659227: VIB tools-light requires 227 MB free space in the locker partition to be safely installed, however 
vibs = ['VMware_locker_tools-light_12.5.1.24649672-24659227']
Please refer to the log file for more details.

Environment

VMware vSAN 8.x

Cause

The ESXi upgrade requires sufficient free space in the locker partition (part of the ESX-OSData partition) to install or update the necessary VIBs (vSphere Installation Bundles), such as tools-light.

Verification via the df -h /locker command shows the partition is at or near 100% utilization, with insufficient available space (e.g., 214.0M) to meet the required space (e.g., 227 MB):

[root@ESXi:~ ] df -h /locker
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
VMFSOS 119.8G 119.5G 214.0M 100% /vmfs/volumes/OSDATA-66###271-e0####2d-f##0-30########a4

This is often confirmed by log entries in /var/log/vobd.log indicating low free space for OSData and Scratch partitions:

2025-11-06T06:00:00.902Z In(14) vobd[2097707] :[GenericCorrelator] 10591826115678us: [vob. user. osdata. partition. full] OSData is low on available space (213.0 MiB free) .This may result in system failure.Please refer to KB article: KB 87212
2025-11-06T06:00:00.902Z In(14) vobd[2097707]: [OserLevelCorrelator] 10591742736793us: [esx.problem. scratch.partition. full] Scratch is low on available space (213.O MiB free). This may result in system failure Please refer to Knowledge Base article: KB 87212
2025-11-06T06:00:00.902Z In(14) vobd[2097707] :[OserLevelCorrelator] 10591826115678us: [vob.user. osdata.partition. full] OSData is low on available space (213.0 MiB free) .This may result in system failure. Please refer to KB article: KB 87212
2025-11-06T06:00:00.902Z In(14) vobd[2097707] :[UserLevelCorrelator] 10591742736852us: [esx.problem. osdata.partition.full] OSData is low on available space (213.0MiB free). This may result in system failure. Please refer to Knowledge Base article: KB 87212
2025-11-06T06:05:00.909Z In(14) vobd[2097707] :[GenericCorrelator] 10592126125135us: [vob, user, soratch. partition. full] Soratch is low on available space (212.0 MiB free) . This may result in system failure. Please refer to KB article: KB 87212
2025-11-06T06:05:00.909Z In(14) vobd[2097707]:[GenericCorrelator] 10592126125205us: [vob. user. osdata.partition. full] OSData is low on available space (212.0 MiB free) .This may result in system failure. Please refer to KB article: KB 87212

Resolution

Reconfigure the Persistent Scratch Location

1. Log in to vCenter Server using the vSphere Web Client.
2. Click Hosts and Clusters, then select the specific host.
3. Click System
4. Click  Advanced System Settings.
5. Locate ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation.
6. Click Edit and add the path to the scratch directory.
7. Reboot the host.

Remove unnecessary files from the OSDATA (VMFSOS)

Retry the ESXi Upgrade

Additional Information

System storage VOBs introduced in vSphere 8.0

Creating a persistent scratch location for ESXi 8.x/7.x/6.x