SimpliVity Datastore Access Impaired Warning following power outage

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms

After a power outage or ungraceful shutdown in a SimpliVity environment, the following symptoms occur:

• Virtual Controllers (OVC) display a Red X or warning state in vCenter.
• Alarm: SimpliVity Datastore Access Impaired Warning triggers.
• Alarm: vSphere HA virtual machine failover failed triggers specifically for OVC VMs.

Environment

• HPE SimpliVity
• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x, 8.x, 9.x
• VMware vCenter Server 7.x, 8.x, 9.x
• VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)
•  

Cause

These alarms are expected behaviors following a power loss:

1. Affinity Rules: Omnistack Virtual Controllers are bound to specific ESXi hosts. vSphere HA cannot migrate or restart these VMs on other nodes, causing the "failover failed" alarm.
2. Storage Connectivity: The power interruption briefly breaks the path between ESXi hosts and the storage layer, triggering the "Datastore Access Impaired" warning.

Resolution

Validate system health and clear the alerts:

1. Verify the status of all Omnistack Virtual Controllers (OVC) to ensure they have restarted successfully.
2. Navigate to the Datastores tab in the vSphere Client and confirm that SimpliVity datastores are visible and "Normal."
3. Consult the HPE SimpliVity Administration Guide for standard post-outage health verification procedures to ensure file system integrity.
4. Once storage health is confirmed, right-click the triggered alarms and select Acknowledge or Reset to Green.

If the alerts persist after validation, or if datastores remain inaccessible: Contact Broadcom Support

Additional Information

"vSphere HA virtual machine failed to failover" error in vCenter Server