How to Identify Serial Numbers of NVMe Disks already missing on ESXi but avaiable on hardware Vendor management tool UI

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• A vSAN cluster reports a missing or failed NVMe disk (cache or capacity).
• The vSphere Client displays a vSAN UUID instead of the standard NAA identifier.
• The found NAA identifier has no Serial Number info. Refer Unable to query the serial number of an NVMe device or SSD in ESXi 
• Support personnel or hardware technicians cannot identify the specific physical slot or serial number required for hardware replacement.

Environment

• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.x / 8.0.x
• VMware vSAN (OSA)
• NVMe local storage devices

Resolution

To identify a failed NVMe disk, retrieve information from the remaining online disks and correlate the findings with the hardware management tool (e.g., iLO, iDRAC, or vendor-specific UI).

Method 1:
    User command "vim-cmd hostsvc/hostconfig | grep -A7 canonicalName", Refer Unable to query the serial number of an NVMe device or SSD in ESXi 

Method 2: Querying NVMe Controllers Directly

1. Identify the NVMe Qualified Name (NQN) or device identifier:
   

   localcli storage core device list

   
   
2.  Run the controller identify command against the identified NQN to extract the serial number:
   

   localcli nvme controller identify -c <NQN_Identifier> | grep "Serial Number"

3. Cross-Reference: Compare the retrieved serial numbers of online disks against your hardware inventory to determine which physical slot corresponds to the "missing" disk.