NVMe drive not detected in ESXi 8.0.x on HPE Gen11 hardware despite being visible in lspci

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

•  A newly added or hot-plugged NVMe drive is not visible in the vSphere Client or when running "esxcli storage core nvme device list".
•  The drive is physically healthy and visible via the HPE Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) console.
•  Running lspci | grep -i nvm on the ESXi host correctly lists all NVMe controllers, confirming physical PCIe connectivity.
•  The environment is typically a vSAN ESA cluster running ESXi 8.0.x on HPE Gen11 hardware.

Environment

VMware vSAN 8.x

Cause

This issue occurs because the high-level vSphere storage stack fails to dynamically mount the namespace or register the NVMe controller after a hot-plug operation on certain HPE Gen11 configurations. While the low-level PCIe bus recognizes the device, the runtime storage subsystem requires a hardware-level bus re-enumeration to properly initialize the resources.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, perform a cold boot of the affected ESXi host to trigger a full PCIe bus re-scan.

1. Place the affected ESXi host into "Maintenance Mode"
    select the "Ensure Accessibility" data migration option.

2. Reboot the host from the vCenter.

3. Monitor the the reboot process from HPE ILO (Hardware console)

4. Once the host has rebooted, log in via SSH and verify the disk is detected:
  
   esxcli storage core nvme device list

5. Exit Maintenance Mode.

6. Repeat these steps sequentially for other affected nodes in the cluster if necessary.

Note: If the drive is detected but shows an empty display name or remains unusable, ensure it is formatted to a supported sector size (512B) and that Namespace Attribute Notices are enabled (refer to KB Newly created NVMe device cannot be recognized by ESXi and KB Newly installed NVME disk cannot be recognized by ESXi).

Additional Information

Reference KB articles:

Newly installed NVME disk cannot be recognized by ESXi 

Newly created NVMe device cannot be recognized by ESXi 

To speak with a customer representative or a Support Engineer see Contact Support. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on your respective region.