Greenfield deployment of VCF 9.1 fails validation precheck with error "Can not find OSDATA partition on ESX Host <host_name>"

Products

• VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

• It has been confirmed that an OSDATA volume is configured on a VMFS volume using the command vim-cmd hostsvc/advopt/view OSData.configuredLocation on the host
• KB 376163 was used to move the OSDATA partition to a new Fiber Channel LUN but the validation failure persists
• However running the command configstorecli config current get -c esx -g storage -k osdata_location returns an empty array ([])
• The OSDATA partition does NOT have the string "OSDATA" in it's name.

Environment

VCF 9.1

Cause

• The precheck does not look for an OSDATA  partition but rather a partition with the naming convention "/vmfs/volumes/OSDATA-xxxxxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx"  (i.e. the word OSDATA needs to be in the name)

Resolution

• Identify a disk you wish to format (e.g. mpx.vmhbax:C#:T#:L#)
• Use the following command to create an OSDATA partition on that disk:
• esxcli storage osdata create -d mpx.vmhbax:C#:T#:L#  -m max
• If the disk already has partitions add --clearpartitions to the command to format it
• List the volumes (df -h) and ensure the OSDATA partition has been created and complies with the naming convention.
• Retry the failed validation task in the Installer.