vSAN Orphaned Objects
I recently got asked a question about how to managed orphaned objects in vSAN, previously with VMFS this was being managed with a PowerShell script, but the customer couldn’t get it to work with vSAN. Which is expected behaviour as managing these vSAN namespace associations/objects is not possible via the GUI or script.
Instead these namespaces can be managed using RVC or the Ruby vSphere Console if required.
The following blog details the use of RVC;
https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2014/07/managing-vsan-ruby-vsphere-console.html
Once you have logged into RVC, running ‘ls’ will provided you with options to browse the vSphere estate.
Once you have located the relevant vSAN object the command to view unsynchronised / inaccessible / orphaned objects is;
vsan.check_state /path/to/vsan/cluster
As a further example, to check one of the clusters in my lab environment the command is, “vsan.check_state /localhost/DC1/computers/MGMT”. I’ve added a screenshot of example output below.
There are a few switches to resolve inaccessible objects with this command, which are listed on page 21 of RVC reference guide, or from the output of “vsan.check_state -h”.
However, I would suggest that if you are seeing a large number of inaccessible or orphaned objects, then gather the output of the check_state command and raise a case with VMware support to help identify the reason why.
Thanks