The current operation is not compatible with the host's version (VMware vSAN)

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

After replacing a physical drive and recreating vSAN disk groups on an ESXi host, vCenter Server displays a physical disk health warning:

• vCenter Server displays a "Physical disk health error" alert.
• Error message: "The current operation is not compatible with the host's version. The host may be running on an older release."
• Disk groups appear healthy from the command-line interface (CLI) using esxcli vsan storage list.
• The vSAN cluster contains hosts with mixed ESXi build revisions.

Environment

• VMware vSAN 8.0 and later.
• Mixed ESXi build revisions within the same cluster.

Cause

 This error occurs when disk groups are modified on a host running a higher build revision than other nodes in the vSAN cluster. vCenter Server evaluates physical disk health against cluster-wide capability matrices. Mismatched build revisions across host management daemons cause vCenter Server to generate a version compatibility exception in the UI, even though the host kernel handles local disk group operations without issue.

Resolution

1. Follow vSAN upgrade best practices when upgrading vSAN clusters. 
    
2. Place the target ESXi host into Maintenance Mode using the "Ensure Accessibility" option to ensure data safety.
3. Restart the vSAN management service on the target host via SSH/CLI: /etc/init.d/vsanmgmt restart
4. Restart the ESXi host management daemon (hostd) and vCenter agent daemon (vpxa): /etc/init.d/hostd restart /etc/init.d/vpxa restart
5. Check vCenter Server to verify whether the physical disk health error is still present. If the error persists, reboot the target ESXi host to complete full host subsystem re-initialization.
6. Verify upon host boot that vCenter Server accurately reflects healthy vSAN disk groups and that the physical disk health error is cleared.
7. Schedule an upgrade for the down-revision hosts to standardize host revisions across the cluster.

Note: Standardizing host revisions across the cluster is critical to prevent operational schema mismatches during future lifecycle management tasks.