vSAN shows as disabled in vCenter or via ESXi CLI upon powering up the cluster after a planned cluster shutdown

Products

VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

Impact/Risks:

vSAN is disabled upon powering on the cluster

Symptoms:

vSAN cluster was shut down for planned power maintenance
All VMs in the vSAN cluster show as inaccessible in vCenter
Upon powering on the cluster vSAN shows as disabled in vCenter

7.x

8.x and newer

vSAN may even show as disabled on the hosts via esxcli vsan cluster get

[root@esxi1:~] esxcli vsan cluster get
vSAN Clustering is not enabled on this host

Environment

VMware vSAN (All Versions)

Cause

The Shutdown Cluster Wizard doesn't disable vSAN. This is due to a user clicking on "Turn Off vSAN" mid-cluster shutdown due to a potential error in the "Shutdown Cluster" wizard thinking this will complete the cluster shutdown.

Or clicking "Turn Off vSAN" instead of "Shutdown Cluster" to power down the cluster.

Resolution

Do not use "Turn Off vSAN" to try and complete the cluster shutdown. See KB "Turn Off vSAN" is to disable vSAN Services on the cluster not to shut down the vSAN cluster. for further details.

Workaround:

To resolve the issue with vSAN being disabled in vCenter only follow the below steps:

1) Navigate to vSAN Cluster > vSAN > Services and click on "Configure vSAN" for 7.x, for 8.x and newer select the cluster type to be configured.

Note: This will not reformat the existing disk groups/storage pools on the hosts. As you walk through the enable vSAN wizard the "Claim Disks" step will see the disks are already claimed and show the vSAN datastore information and you can just proceed to the next step in the wizard without issue.

2) Run the below commands on all hosts in the cluster

esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /VSAN/DOMPauseAllCCPs
esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /VSAN/IgnoreClusterMemberListUpdates

3) Once vSAN is re-enabled vSAN > Services may show the "Shutdown Cluster" wizard is out of sync with the cluster

Note: For 8.x and newer if you get one of the below errors and vSAN fails to enable it means you chose the wrong vSAN storage architecture

- General vSAN error. vSAN ESA can not be enabled as diskgroups are present on 'esxi1,esxi2,esxi3,esxi4'. <--Re-enable vSAN choosing OSA as disk groups are present
- General vSAN error. vSAN can not be enabled as there are storage pool disks on 'esxi1,esxi2,esxi3,esxi4'. <--Re-enable vSAN choosing ESA as storage pools are present

4) Reboot vCenter to get vCenter and ESXi back in sync with each other if vCenter and ESXi are out of sync

To resolve this issue with vSAN being disabled in both vCenter and ESXi follow the below steps:

1) Navigate to vSAN Cluster > vSAN > Services and click on "Configure vSAN" for 7.x, for 8.x and newer select the cluster type to be configured.

Note: This will not reformat the existing disk groups/storage pools on the hosts. As you walk through the enable vSAN wizard the "Claim Disks" step will see the disks are already claimed and show the vSAN datastore information and you can just proceed to the next step in the wizard without issue.

2) Run the below commands on all hosts in the cluster

esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /VSAN/DOMPauseAllCCPs
esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /VSAN/IgnoreClusterMemberListUpdates

3) Once vSAN is re-enabled vSAN > Services may show the "Shutdown Cluster" wizard is out of sync with the cluster

Note: For 8.x and newer if you get one of the below errors and vSAN fails to enable it means you chose the wrong vSAN storage architecture

- General vSAN error. vSAN ESA can not be enabled as diskgroups are present on 'esxi1,esxi2,esxi3,esxi4'. <--Re-enable vSAN choosing OSA as disk groups are present
- General vSAN error. vSAN can not be enabled as there are storage pool disks on 'esxi1,esxi2,esxi3,esxi4'. <--Re-enable vSAN choosing ESA as storage pools are present

4) Once vSAN is re-enabled in vCenter run "esxcli vsan cluster get" to check if vSAN was enabled on the hosts.

5) Reboot vCenter to get vCenter and ESXi back in sync with each other