ESXi Host Hangs or Delays During "activating: storage-path-claim"

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• During boot of an ESXi host 'hpp loaded successfully. activating: storage-path-claim.' task takes too long to finish.
• ESXi booting will take more than >30mins.
• KVM console output

• /vmfs/volumes/##########################/log/jumpstart-stdout.log shows

YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.###Z Method invocation failed: execute boot storage restore --nfs-volumes failed
YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.###Z restore-nfs-volumes: failed to restore volume :<datastore#>: Failed DNS lookup: hostname: <nfs_server_fqdn>, error: -3

YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.###Z Method invocation failed: execute boot storage restore --nfs41-volumes failed
YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.###Z restore-nfs-volumes: ResolveHostNames failed. Retrying Failed DNS lookup: hostname: <nfs_server_fqdn>, error: -3

Environment

• ESXi 7.x
• ESXi 8.x
• ESX 9.x

Cause

When there is a DNS lookup failure during the ESXi boot.

Resolution

Investigate the environment causing the DNS Lookup failures.

1. Checking ESXi DNS configuration.
2. Performing lookup validation.
3. Verifying DNS records at the DNS server side.
4. Checking for latency or network issues if DNS servers are behind any Load Balancer.
5. Ensuring the correct DNS Server IP is being used.
6. Checking firewall rules affecting DNS traffic.
7. Executing packet capture at the switch level for network analysis.
8. Troubleshooting any existing NFS connectivity issues.
9. Testing the VMkernel connectivity.

Additional Information

ESXi host is stuck during the boot process with the message activating storage-path-claim