Error: Boot disk is not found or not responsive during ESXi 9.1 rollback

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

An ESXi host experiences a Purple Screen of Death (PSOD) or fails to boot after rolling back from a Security Patch Build (e.g., 25433460) to a Base Build (e.g., 25370933). This issue is typically observed on ESXi 9.1 environments using local storage controllers.

Symptoms:

• The system displays: System has found a problem in your machine and cannot continue : naa id boot disk is not found.
• Error message: Boot disk is not found or not responsive.
• Logs show ScsiDeviceIO: Get VPD 86 Inquiry for device failed.
• Logs show Invalid volume UUID during the boot process.

Environment

• VMware vSphere ESXi 9.1
• Dell PowerEdge Hardware (e.g., R740)
• VMware High Performance Plug-in (HPP)

Cause

The HPP plugin fails to retrieve critical physical descriptor pages from the storage controller after a version rollback. This prevents the ESXi kernel from parsing the GUID Partition Table (GPT) metadata, blocking the boot device from mounting.

Resolution

1. Perform a hardware diagnostics check to rule out physical disk or controller failure
2. Verify and upgrade the BIOS and storage controller firmware to the latest supported versions.
3. If the hardware is healthy but the partition block signatures remain unreadable, perform a clean OS deployment to isolate and resolve software metadata corruption.
4. If the issue persists, contact Broadcom Support for further analysis.