During ESXi installation, the iSCSI SAN boot LUN might not be discovered.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

Administrators may encounter an issue during the installation of VMware ESXi where the iSCSI SAN boot LUN is not discovered.

• The installation process may halt or fail to list the expected storage devices.

• Subsequent attempts to connect to the iSCSI target or discover the LUN fail repeatedly.

Environment

VMware ESXi 8.x

Cause

This issue occurs when the initial connection attempt to the iSCSI target fails.
A common trigger for this initial failure is when the iSCSI target address is configured with IPv6.
When this initial failure happens, the ESXi installer reverts the network configuration.
Because of this reversion, any subsequent retries to connect to the iSCSI target or discover the boot LUN will fail, as the necessary network settings are no longer active.

Resolution

This issue is resolved in VMware ESXi 8.0 Update 3h.

Additional Information

If you are unable to upgrade immediately and encounter this issue, ensure that your network environment is correctly configured for the IP protocol version you are using (IPv4 vs IPv6) and restart the installation process from the beginning to re-initialize the network configuration.