vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) patching blocked by unhealthy vSAN status

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

You are unable to perform patching or upgrade operations on your ESXi hosts because the operation is blocked by an unhealthy vSAN status. While your Virtual Machines may appear to be running normally, the update manager prevents you from proceeding.

 

Under Cluster > Configuration > vSAN - Diisk Management, unhealthy diskgroups may be present. 

Environment

vSAN 8.x

Cause

The issue is caused by hardware failure (Absent Disks) within the vSAN cluster.

vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) and Update Manager enforce strict health checks before maintenance operations. Because absent disks compromise data redundancy, the system blocks host remediation steps to prevent potential data loss or quorum failure during the patching process.

Resolution

1. Identify and Replace Hardware: Locate the physical disks identified as "Absent" in the vSAN Disk Management view and replace them.

2. Recreate Disk Groups: If the failure caused the disk group to become unmounted, recreate the affected disk groups following the vSAN Management Guide.

3. Verify Cluster Health: Navigate to Monitor > vSAN > Skyline Health and ensure all "Data" and "Cluster" health checks are green.

4. Retry Remediation: Once the vSAN status is "Healthy," return to vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) and trigger the host patching/remediation task again.

Additional Information

The vSAN disk appears as Absent in vSAN Disk Management