Removing failed disk or disk group from vSAN cluster

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Removing failed capacity disk

In case of a failed capacity disk we can remove it using:

1. Go to Cluster -> Configure -> Disk management and view all disks in cluster. We should be able to find a failed or inaccessible disk in cluster.
2. Once the ESXi host is identified put the host in maintenance mode using "Ensure accessibility" option.

   If the disk is already evacuated as part of vSAN internal automation then we can simply remove the disk without putting host in maintenance mode.

3. We can remove the failed disk using graphical remove option. This may require going to pre-check to ensure that removing it has no adverse effect. We should not have any inaccessible object after removal.
4. After disk is removed from vSAN we can get its serial no / slot information from BMC (iDRAC / Xclarity / iLO) etc.
5. Then remove failed disk and ensure we have removed correct disk by matching the serial no. of removed disk with serial no. of problematic disk from BMC / IMPI console
6. If we have replaced failed disk with new working disk, then we can go to Cluster -> Configure -> vSAN Disk management and for the same disk group click on three dots (Menu) and choose "Add disks" option. Then add the new disk to the same disk group from which we removed failed disk.

Refer:

• https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2150593

Removing failed cache disk

In case a cache disk fails we need to remove entire disk group. For that:

1. Go to Cluster -> Configure -> Disk management and view all disks in cluster. We should be able to find a failed or inaccessible cache disk in cluster.
2. Once the ESXi host is identified put the host in maintenance mode using "Ensure accessibility" option.
3. We can remove the disk group which has failed cache disk using graphical remove disk group option
4. After disk is removed from vSAN we can get its serial no / slot information from BMC (iDRAC / Xclarity / iLO) etc.
5. Then remove failed disk and ensure we have removed correct disk by matching the serial no. of removed disk with serial no. of problematic disk from BMC / IMPI console
6. If we have replaced failed disk with new working disk, then we can go to Cluster -> Configure and create a new disk group with this disk as cache and older capacity disks.

Refer:

• https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vsan-monitoring.doc/GUID-95E5DAF9-FE36-497B-90B4-DB1CA05FE935.html

Command line removal of disk or disk-group

The above steps can be done via CLI by referring https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2150567

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