ESXi Reports Repeated “Failed to Fetch FC Target Attributes” Warnings for Unused Fibre Channel HBAs

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Continuous warning messages stating “Failed to fetch FC target attributes for path vmhba” are reported in the ESXi vmkernel.log.
• These warnings are observed on unused Fibre Channel HBAs that are not actively configured for storage connectivity within the environment. No similar warnings or storage connectivity issues are observed on the active NVMe over FC adapters currently handling production storage traffic.

In /var/run./log/vmkernel.log below events will be seen 

2026-04-13T12:29:00.954Z In(182) vmkernel: cpu184:2099566)ScsiPath: 1260: Couldn't allocate path (vmhba8:C0:T0:L0) during scan: Failure

2026-04-13T12:29:00.954Z Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu184:2099566)WARNING: ScsiPath: 830: Failed to fetch FC target attributes for path vmhba8:C0:T1:L0.Status = 195887105

2026-04-13T12:29:00.954Z In(182) vmkernel: cpu184:2099566)ScsiPath: 1260: Couldn't allocate path (vmhba9:C0:T1:L0) during scan: Failure

2026-04-13T12:29:00.954Z Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu184:2099566)WARNING: ScsiPath: 830: Failed to fetch FC target attributes for path vmhba9:C0:T2:L0.Status = 195887105

2026-04-13T12:29:00.954Z In(182) vmkernel: cpu184:2099566)ScsiPath: 1260: Couldn't allocate path (vmhba10:C0:T2:L0) during scan: Failure

2026-04-13T12:29:00.954Z Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu184:2099566)WARNING: ScsiPath: 830: Failed to fetch FC target attributes for path vmhba10:C0:T3:L0.Status = 195887105

2026-04-13T12:29:00.954Z In(182) vmkernel: cpu184:2099566)ScsiPath: 1260: Couldn't allocate path (vmhba11:C0:T3:L0) during scan: Failure

2026-04-13T12:29:00.954Z Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu184:2099566)WARNING: ScsiPath: 830: Failed to fetch FC target attributes for path vmhba11:C0:T4:L0.Status = 195887105

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0 U2 and later

Cause

This issue occurs due to a code behavior introduced in ESXi 8.0 Update 2 and later releases related to FC path handling enhancements. During periodic storage scans, ESXi attempts to collect Fibre Channel target attributes for all discovered FC targets, including stale or invalid targets that are no longer actively connected or in use.

Resolution

1. As a workaround, filter the repetitive warning messages
2. Permanent fix will be available in the future 8.x release.