vSAN Remote Datastore Mount Fails to Report Capacity with Partitioned Cluster Status

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) compute cluster hosts successfully mount a remote vSAN datastore from the Management Domain; however, the cluster displays as "Partitioned" in vCenter. Attempts to check storage capacity via df fail to retrieve remote datastore metrics. This occurs when the VMkernel adapter dedicated to vSAN traffic is incorrectly configured with the "vsanExternal" traffic type instead of the standard "vsan" type.

Environment

 

• VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9

• vSAN Remote Management/HCI Mesh

• ESXi 8.0.x & 9

 

Cause

The VMkernel adapter on the compute cluster hosts is configured with the vsanExternal traffic type. For HCI Mesh and remote datastore mounting in standard VCF architectures, the "vsan" traffic type is required for proper cluster communication and metadata exchange.

Resolution

 

• Log in to the vSphere Client.

• Navigate to the Inventory view and select a host in the partitioned compute cluster.

• Go to the Configure tab.

• Under Networking, select VMkernel adapters.

• Select the adapter used for vSAN traffic (e.g., vmk2).

• Click Edit.

• In the Available services section, deselect vSAN External.

• Select vSAN.

• Click OK.

• Repeat these steps for all hosts in the compute cluster.

• Verify the cluster status returns to "Healthy" and that df -h correctly reports the remote datastore capacity.