Local datastores appear as inaccessible

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• All local LUNs associated with the controller are reported in a "Lost Communication" or "Permanently Unavailable" state.
• Under the Storage Devices view, the status for each local LUN path is marked as DEAD as shown below:

         

• Active I/O is halted, and vmhba# adapter statistics indicate a high volume of failed READ and WRITE commands.

Environment

VMware ESXi 7.x
VMware ESXi 8.x

Cause

This issue occurs due to a hardware-level communication failure between the ESXi hypervisor and the local storage controller (MegaRAID SAS Invader).

Validation:

The /var/run/log/vmkernel.log highlights the following error state: Host Status [0x1] NO_CONNECT

Resolution

This is identified as a physical layer issue and troubleshooting within ESXi will not resolve the underlying connectivity issue.

1. Contact hardware vendor to perform a comprehensive review of the controller logs, physical drive health, and backplane connectivity.
2. Inspect the physical SAS/SATA cabling and ensure the MegaRAID controller is properly seated and powered.

Workaround:

A hard reboot of the ESXi host may temporarily re-initialize the vmhba# adapter and restore path connectivity; however, this does not address the root cause of the hardware instability.