Adding ESXi host to SDDC Manager cluster fails with "Host does not have enough capacity disks"

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

When adding a new ESXi host to an existing cluster through SDDC Manager, Users encounter the following error message during the Add Host workflow: "Host does not have enough capacity disks."

 

This typically occurs when a user attempts to add a "Compute-Only" host (a host containing only a local boot drive or a single internal storage disk) into a cluster that is already running on the vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA).

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation

Cause

• The failure is caused by an architectural mismatch between the host hardware and the cluster configuration. This behavior is expected and is due to the architectural design of SDDC Manager 5.x.

Resolution

In a VCF environment, all hosts within a single cluster must be homogeneous. Because the host types and storage architectures differ (Standard vSAN ESA nodes vs. vSAN Compute-Only nodes), they cannot coexist within the same cluster boundaries.

1. This specific architecture adding a compute-only node with no capacity disks directly into a vSAN ESA cluster is not supported in VMware Cloud Foundation.
2. Refer the Techdocs for information and Resolution: vSAN Storage with VMware Cloud Foundation