Hosts lost access to VMFS volumes following ESXi patching

Products

• VMware vSphere ESX 7.x
• VMware vSphere ESX 8.x

Issue/Introduction

• After ESXi host patching, you see only local datastores and FC datastores are missing
  
  
• Running esxcfg-scsidevs -a shows that all the vmhba's are link-up status and operational
  
  
• All associated LUNs are reported as 'Attached' but now are unmounted and unconsumed by the affected hosts

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

• The partition table is missing from affected datastores
  
  
• The output of the partedUtil command against the device in question gives the below output similar to:

  partedUtil getptbl /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.################################

  gpt
  52216 255 63 838860800

• An ESXi host may find a datastore rendered inaccessible following a reboot or storage rescan (e.g., after patching) if the underlying VMFS partition was deleted prior to the host performing these actions. The partition table is physically located on the LUN, this change is visible to all vSphere hosts with access to that LUN. However, only the hosts that perform a rescan/reboot will be affected

Resolution

Recreate the VMFS Partition table and perform a cluster-level rescan.

Please engage Broadcom Support for assistance.