Storage Architecture: Prechecking vSAN Disk Eligibility Before VCF Fleet Deployment

VCF deployments that rely on vSAN can fail early if disks are not eligible or if stale vSAN partitions exist. The KB outlines a practical checklist: verify disk eligibility and check for stale partitions before retrying the installer.

Source KB: https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/408233/resolving-vsan-disks-availability-valida.html

The narrow use case

Run a precheck against candidate ESXi hosts to detect stale vSAN partitions and block cluster bring-up until storage is clean.

Orchestrator action: vSAN disk eligibility + stale partition scan

Goal: turn a manual SSH validation into a workflow-driven PASS/FAIL report for host readiness.

Workflow steps (VMware Aria Orchestrator)

• Create a workflow: 'vSAN - Disk Readiness Precheck (VCF9)'
• Inputs: esxiHosts (array of VC:HostSystem), sshCredential (secure string/credential), failOnStalePartitions (boolean, default true)
• Step 1: For each host, enumerate physical disks intended for vSAN (vCenter inventory or host storage query).
• Step 2: For each disk, run a remote command to check the partition table (partedUtil getptbl) and detect stale vSAN partitions.
• Step 3: If stale partitions are found and failOnStalePartitions is true, fail the workflow with disk identifiers + hostnames.
• Step 4: Output a single readiness report that VCF Installer or downstream automation can consume.

Action steps

1. Run this precheck before any new domain bring-up or major storage reconfiguration.
2. Use the PASS/FAIL report as a hard gate for VCF Installer-driven flows.
3. If remediation is required, perform cleanup in a controlled maintenance window, then re-run the precheck to confirm.