How to identify the device name and serial number of an NVMe disk in use for vSAN

Products

• VMware vSAN
• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

In the situation where an NVMe disk has failed or is in an absent state, the vCenter may not be able to display the device name, making it difficult to identify the physical disk that needs to be investigated. Depending on how the physical disk has failed, vCenter may only have a reference to the vSAN UUID of the disk and not the actual device name.

Symptoms

• vCenter displays a vSAN UUID instead of a device name (e.g., naa.xxx or t10.xxx).
• Disk status shows as "Absent" or "Failed."
• vmkwarning logs may show: WARNING: StorageDeviceVsi: Device vsan: <UUID> not found.

Environment

VMware vSAN

Cause

The physical disk has experienced a failure that prevents vCenter from retrieving the standard namespace or device identity, leaving only the vSAN management layer's UUID.

Resolution

Review this command before running it.

1. Run the following command to get a list of all NVMe disks attached to the ESXi host: esxcli nvme device list
2. For each HBA listed in the output (e.g., vmhba_X), run this command to find the corresponding device name: esxcli nvme device namespace list -A vmhba_X
3. If the serial number of the disk is required to locate it physically, run: esxcli nvme device get -A vmhba_X | grep -E "Serial"

 

Additional Information

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