Virtual machines and datastore appear as inaccessible in vCenter due to HBA hardware failure

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Virtual machine appears as “Inaccessible” in VMware vCenter Server.
• Datastore appears as inaccessible, with free capacity reported as 0 bytes .

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

• The HBA ports report a Down/Unknown status, indicating a physical connectivity failure.

• A VMHBA state of Down confirms a physical layer issue (no signal/link detected).

Resolution

Engage the hardware vendor to diagnose and resolve the HBA issue.