SRM Test Failover Fails Due to HBA Rescan Timeout from Stale ESXi Device Entries

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

Site Recovery Manager (SRM) test failover or cleanup workflows may report HBA rescan timeouts on specific ESXi hosts. This is typically caused by stale device configuration entries for decommissioned hardware, which cause the ESXi host to repeatedly attempt to establish communication, leading to Permanent Device Loss (PDL) errors and triggering an SRM timeout.

Symptoms:

• SRM test failover fails with: 

Failed to recover datastore '<Datastore>'. VMFS volume residing on recovered devices '"########-####-####-####-############"' cannot be found. Recovered device '########-####-####-####-############' not found after HBA rescan. Failed to rescan HBAs on host '<FQDN>'. The connection to the remote server is down. Operation timed out: 300 seconds Some virtual machines in the protection group '<PG_Name>' could not be recovered

• Cleanup operation fails with:
  
  Failed to rescan HBAs on host '<FQDN>'. The connection to the remote server is down. Operation timed out: 300 seconds
  
  
• vmkernel.log displays multiple PDL entries for devices: 
  
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.MSZ Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu49:15862372)WARNING: vmw_psp_rr: psp_rrSelectPathToActivate:1962: Could not select path for device "naa.################################".
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.MSZ Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu39:15862374)WARNING: VMW_SATP_ALUA: satp_alua_issueInquiry:101: Target reported LUN_NOT_CONNECTED / NO_DEVICE with PQ: 0x1, PDT: 0x1f, path: vmhba4:C0:T7:L106
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.MSZ Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu39:15862374)WARNING: VMW_SATP_ALUA: satp_alua_getTargetPortInfo:190: Could not get page 83 INQUIRY data for path "vmhba4:C0:T7:L106" - Device is permanently unavailable (195887410)

Environment

• VMware Live Recovery 9.x
• VMware ESXi 8.x
• Array Based Replication (ABR)

Cause

Stale configuration entries remain on the ESXi host for intentionally decommissioned devices. The ESXi host continuously attempts to re-establish communication, triggering a loop of PDL errors and retries that exhaust the rescan timeout window.

Resolution

1. Reboot the affected ESXi host to flush cached storage inventory and clear stale device entries.
2. Perform a manual rescan of the storage adapters from the vSphere Client to confirm the timeout no longer occurs.
3. Re-run the SRM test recovery workflow.