VM in inaccessible state with objects in Absent state.

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• VMs are in inaccessible state with Absent components.
  
  
  
  
• vSAN node's maintenance task is slow/stuck.

Environment

VMware vSphere vSAN

Cause

• Multiple hosts are parallelly in maintenance mode or in down state thereby violating the applied storage policy.
  
  Example:
  
  If a VM is utilizing RAID 1 FTT1 storage policy in a cluster where multiple hosts are placed in maintenance mode at the same time then it's object will show up as inaccessible.
  
  

  [root@esxi01:~] esxcli vsan debug object health summary get

  Health Status                                              Number Of Objects
---------------------------------------------------------  -----------------
remoteAccessible                                                           0
inaccessible                                                               5
reduced-availability-with-no-rebuild                                       0
reduced-availability-with-no-rebuild-delay-timer                           0
reducedavailabilitywithpolicypending                                       0
reducedavailabilitywithpolicypendingfailed                                 0
reduced-availability-with-active-rebuild                                   0
reducedavailabilitywithpausedrebuild                                       0
data-move                                                                 17
nonavailability-related-reconfig                                           0
nonavailabilityrelatedincompliancewithpolicypending                        0
nonavailabilityrelatedincompliancewithpolicypendingfailed                  0
nonavailability-related-incompliance                                       0
nonavailabilityrelatedincompliancewithpausedrebuild                        0
healthy                                                                  500

• In /var/run/log/vobd.log, you will see below entries -
  
  2025-03-17T10:33:48.238Z: [UserLevelCorrelator] 18684429561053us: [esx.audit.maintenancemode.entering] The host has begun entering maintenance mode.
2025-03-17T10:33:48.513Z: [UserLevelCorrelator] 18684429666095us: [esx.audit.maintenancemode.entered] The host has entered maintenance mode.

  
  Parallely in /var/run/log/vsanmgmt.log, you will be able to validate which mode was used to place the vSAN node in maintenance mode -
  
  2025-03-17T10:33:48.514Z In(14) vsand[2103663]: [opID=agw-0036006-####-#### VsanResourceCheckSystemImpl::PerformResourceCheckOnHost] Running PerformResourceCheckOnHost with operation: EnterMaintenanceMode, entities: (str) [
2025-03-17T10:33:48.514Z In(14)[+] vsand[2103663]: ], maintenanceSpec: (vim.host.MaintenanceSpec) {
2025-03-17T10:33:48.521Z In(14)[+] vsand[2103622]: ] ensureObjectAccessibility EnterMaintenanceMode
2025-03-17T10:33:48.523Z In(14)[+] vsand[2103622]: ] decomMode ensureObjectAccessibility operation EnterMaintenanceMode


  
  Below string value will represent the three modes available for maintenance mode operation -
  
  
  • ensureObjectAccessibility - Evacuate data from the disk to ensure object accessibility in the vSAN cluster, before entering maintenance mode. The default value is ensureObjectAccessibility. This value will be used if you do not specify any value for the vsanmode.
    
    
  • evacuateAllData - Evacuate all data from the disk before entering maintenance mode.
  • noAction - Do not move vSAN data out of the disk before entering maintenance mode.
     

     

Resolution

Note: Always perform a precheck for data migration before placing a node into maintenance mode and also check the status of the resyncing object .Placing and exiting out of maintenance mode are some of the operations triggering resync operations.

Refer - Check the Data Migration Capabilities of a Host in the vSAN Cluster

• Wait for the maintenance task and resync task to complete for the vSAN nodes.