Cancel ESXi maintenance mode task

Products

• VMware vSAN
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Host stuck going into maint mode stuck (90+%) for over an hour
• Data being evacuated

Environment

8.x, 8.0U3

Cause

• The issue can stem from selecting "Full Data Migration" for the vSAN data migration, causing the transfer of data to take longer than expected.

Resolution

• Run command to cancel the maintenance mode task: 

  esxcli vsan maintenancemode cancel

• If steps above does not resolve the issue, you can try the following: 

  1. 1. Make sure all virtual machine are migrated from host affected

     2. Login to ESXI host (web client) and EXIT host from maintenance mode

     3. If web client does not help, restart vSAN service on host affected:

        • • /etc/init.d/vpxa restart

          • /etc/init.d/hostd restart

          • /etc/init.d/vsanmgmtd restart

     4. After restarting service try same steps above to exit host from maintenance mode

Additional Information

• Full data migration will move 100% of the data off the host. This is generally only required if you are permanently decommissioning/wiping the host.
• Ensure accessibility will move only what is necessary to keep the VMs running. This is recommended for patching, reboots, or hardware swaps.