vSAN Health Service – Online Health – vCenter Server up to date check.

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information about the vCenter Server up to date check which was added as of vSAN 6.6. This check verifies that the release version of vCenter Server is compatible with the release version of ESXi according to the VMware Product Interoperability Guide . If the host version is higher then vCenter version it can cause communication issues between vCenter and the hosts which can result in false positives and not being able to pull information from the hosts. VMware recommends vCenter be equal to or higher than ESXi. See KB 68174 for more details.

Symptoms:
Possible false positives triggered alerts in vSAN health/Skyline health: 

• Basic (unicast) connectivity test. 
• Hosts with connectivity issues.
• All hosts have a vSAN vmknic configured.
• vSAN cluster configuration consistency.
• vSAN extended configuration in sync. 
• Controller drive is VMware certified. 
• Controller firmware is VMware certified. 
• vSAN firmware version recommendation. 
• Controller is VMware certified for ESXi releases. 

Environment

VMware vSAN 7.0.x
VMware vSAN 8.0.x
VMware vSAN 6.5.x

Cause

vCenter is a lower build / Kernel than ESXi's.

Resolution

If this health check displays an alert, upgrade the vCenter Server to the compatible version. Refer to the vSphere upgrade guide for the procedure. For specific supported upgrade paths, see the VMware product interoperability upgrade section.
 
Before you perform the upgrade of vCenter, make sure you understand the complete vSphere upgrade process and check the version you need to upgrade to is compatible with other potential VMware and 3rd party products to ensure a smooth and uninterrupted upgrade.

IN order to the vSAN health plugin GUI to work efficiently, it is recommended that the vCenter Server and ESXI version should be in the same patch level and on the same update version. A lower version of the vCenter server will not load Health Plugin properly. The release date of the " vCenter Server and ESXi " should be checked before doing upgrade / chnages.

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:
vSAN health checks and operations may not work correctly, as vCenters Kernel and API are a lower version than ESXI's.