vSAN Datastore Persists in vSphere Client After Disabling Services

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

After disabling vSAN services within the vCenter/vSphere GUI and deleting the associated disk groups, the vSAN datastore may still appear in the vSphere Client inventory

Environment

• VMware vSAN 7.x
• VMware vSAN 8.x
• VMware vSAN 9.x

Cause

• The vSAN service process is still running on the ESXi host, preventing the datastore from being unmounted and removed from the inventory. You can verify this by checking the cluster membership state via the command line interface (CLI).
• When you connect via SSH to a vSAN/witness node and execute esxcli vsan cluster get, the node immediately returns the current cluster membership and state. It confirms whether vSAN is enabled, the local node type (e.g., NORMAL for ESXi hosts), and its operational state.

Log onto an SSH session on one of the ESXi hosts.

    - Run this command:

esxcli vsan cluster get

Cluster Information
   Enabled: true
   Current Local Time: 2025-06-10
   Local Node UUID: ########-####-####-####-############
   Local Node Type: NORMAL
   Local Node State: MASTER
   Local Node Health State: HEALTHY
   Sub-Cluster Master UUID: ########-####-####-####-############
   Sub-Cluster Backup UUID: ########-####-####-####-############
   Sub-Cluster UUID: ########-####-####-####-############
   Sub-Cluster Membership Entry Revision: 1
   Sub-Cluster Member Count: 3
   Sub-Cluster Member UUIDs: ########-####-####-####-############, ########-####-####-####-############, ########-####-####-####-############
   Sub-Cluster Member HostNames: ########-####-####-####-############,########-####-####-####-############, ########-####-####-####-############
   Sub-Cluster Membership UUID: ########-####-####-####-############

• Just under Cluster Information, it shows Enabled: True, so vSAN is still enabled on this host.

Resolution

• In order to disable the service permanently on the host, run this command.

esxcli vsan cluster leave

• Once disabled, verify that the vSAN host service is disabled by running

esxcli vsan cluster get

• The output of the command will show "vSAN cluster is disabled" . Use the same steps to check the other hosts in the cluster, and perform the cluster leave operation, if necessary.