vSAN -- ESA -- vSAN Critical Error -- Migration of VM’s with snapshots from a vSAN ESA 8.x Datastore may result in inconsistencies under certain specific conditions

Products

• VMware vSAN 8.x

Issue/Introduction

In vSAN ESA 8.x environments, under certain conditions, migrating VMs from a vSAN ESA datastore using operations such as Storage vMotion, XvMotion, Cold Relocate or Clone may result in inconsistencies at the destination datastore. This issue is specific to vSAN ESA and not applicable to vSAN OSA.

For example you might also observe the following notification in the vSAN Healthcheck 

Urgent: Immediate Action Required .....

 

Environment

VMware vSAN ESA on 8.x before 8.0 U3b

Cause

In vSAN ESA environments, migrating virtual machines with native snapshots from a vSAN ESA datastore to any other datastore using Storage vMotion, XvMotion, Cold Relocate or Clone may result in inconsistencies. These inconsistencies can impact both the snapshot and the running VM at the destination. Symptoms of this problem may include the VM failing to boot up at the destination.

The conditions under which this issue occurs vary, depending on factors such as VM workload patterns and snapshot timing before migration. 

Resolution

Fix for this issue was first introduced in version 8.0U3b however Broadcom recommends upgrading vSAN ESA clusters to VMware-ESXi-8.0U3h-25067014 (80P07) and above as soon as possible as it's the most stable version and includes fixes & recovery tools for the additional below ESA snapshot issues as well.

Urgent Patch (8.0U1c) Available to Prevent Inaccessible Data Risk for VMs on vSAN ESA (Version 8.0, 8.0 P01, 8.0 U1, 8.0U1a (EP1))
Release 8.0U2b Available to Prevent Host Failure / Inaccessible Data Risk due to Rare Snapshot-related Condition on vSAN ESA (Version 8.0, 8.0U1, 8.0U1c)