vSAN Skyline Health -- Infrastructure Health -- "File service VM not found on this host" or "File service VM not powered on on this host. Sockrelay is not running"

Products

• VMware vSAN
• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• vSAN Skyline health alert "Infrastructure health" reports that vSAN File Service VM (FSVM) is not found on host:

  
  Either of the below two errors may be seen:
  "File service VM not found on this host"
  "File service VM not powered on on this host. Sockrelay is not running"

• Clicking on "Remediate File Service" does not redeploy the missing vSAN FSVMs on the hosts, although the remediation task may complete successfully.

• The vCenter was upgraded recently from 7.x to 8.x.

• The ESXi hosts in the vSAN cluster were also upgraded from 7.x to 8.x.

• The version of vSAN FSVM is 7.x.

Environment

VMware vCenter 8.x

VMware vSAN 8.x

Cause

• The vSAN FSVMs fail to redeploy as the OVF and related files to deploy the vSAN FSVM are missing on the vCenter.

• This is expected behavior when vCenter major version upgrade (7.x to 8.x) is performed, where the OVF files are not retained.

• From the vCenter's "/var/log/vmware/eam/eam.log" it can be seen that the EAM (ESX Agent Manager) service is unable to access the OVF of vSAN FSVM version 7.x:

  2026-02-16T09:55:55. 764Z | WARN | vlsi | OVFs. java | 92 | [OVFs->Get:ca353c9a989cc212] Encountered exception during OvfInfo creation.
com.vmware.eam.exception.CannotAccessOVF: Cannot access OVF at https://<vCenter_FQDN>:443/vsanHealth/fileService/ovf/7.0.2.1000-18226214/VMware-vSAN-File-Services-Appliance-7.0.2.1000-18226214_OVF10.ovf

• On validating the vCenter's "/var/log/vmware/vsan-health/vmware-vsan-health-service.log" it can be seen that path for the vSAN FSVM OVF does not exist:

  2026-02-16T18:10:02.682+05:30 ERROR vsan-mgmt [20655] [VsanHttpProvider::doGet opID=noOpId] Looking for non-existing path /storage/vsan-health/../updatemgr/vsan/fileService/ovf-7.0.2.1000-18226214/VMware-vSAN-File-Services-Appliance-7.0.2.1000-18226214_OVF10.ovf, return 404

• This can be verified manually by navigating to the path "/storage/updatemgr/vsan/fileService" in vCenter via SSH. It can be seen that the vSAN FSVM OVF folder is missing/not present:

  root@<vCenter_fqdn> [/storage/updatemgr/vsan/fileService]# ls -l

 

Note: The version of vSAN FSVM OVF missing displayed in the logs will differ depending on the version of vSAN FSVM installed in the environment.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, either:

1. Re-create the missing folders and upload the missing vSAN FSVM OVF and it's related files by following KB vSAN Infrastructure health reports 'File server not found' or 'vSAN File service not enabled'.

2. Or, if the missing vSAN FSVM version OVF is not available on the Broadcom support portal for download and as the ESXi hosts have been upgraded to an 8.x version - the vSAN File Service VM can be upgraded to fix this issue.
   The upgrade workflow would trigger an upload of vSAN OVF and related files and the vSAN FSVMs would get re-deployed.

   1. Download the vSAN FSVM OVF and it's related files from the Broadcom Support portal to local computer. Ensure that the version downloaded is above the current vSAN FSVM version but lower than or equal to the current ESXi host version.

      There should be a total of 6 files:

      VMware-vSAN-File-Services-Appliance-x.x.x.x-x_OVF10.mf
VMware-vSAN-File-Services-Appliance-x.x.x.x-x-x_OVF10.cert
VMware-vSAN-File-Services-Appliance-x.x.x.x-x-x-system.vmdk
VMware-vSAN-File-Services-Appliance-x.x.x.x-x-cloud-components.vmdk
VMware-vSAN-File-Services-Appliance-x.x.x.x-x-log.vmdk
VMware-vSAN-File-Services-Appliance-x.x.x.x-x_OVF10.ovf

   2. Next, initiate the vSAN FSVM upgrade by navigating to vSphere Client > Affected vSAN cluster > Configure > vSAN - Services.

   3. In the vSAN Services tab, on the File Service window click on "Edit" > "Check upgrade".

   4. In the Upgrade File Service dialog box, select the "Manually load OVF" option and then click on "BROWSE".

   5. Here, upload the 6 vSAN FSVM files downloaded in step 2.1.

   6. Click on "Upgrade".

Once this is done, the new vSAN FSVMs will get deployed on all hosts in the cluster.