The storage all paths down (APD) handling on your ESXi host is enabled by default. When it is enabled, the host continues to retry nonvirtual machine I/O commands to a storage device in the APD state for a limited time period. When the time period expires, the host stops its retry attempts and terminates any nonvirtual machine I/O. You can disable the APD handling feature on your host.

If you disable the APD handling, the host will indefinitely continue to retry issued commands in an attempt to reconnect to the APD device. Continuing to retry is the same behavior as in ESXi version 5.0. This behavior might cause virtual machines on the host to exceed their internal I/O timeout and become unresponsive or fail. The host might become disconnected from vCenter Server.

Procedure

  1. Browse to the host in the vSphere Web Client navigator.
  2. Click the Configure tab.
  3. Under System, click Advanced System Settings.
  4. In the Advanced System Settings table, select the Misc.APDHandlingEnable parameter and click the Edit icon.
  5. Change the value to 0.

Results

If you disabled the APD handling, you can reenable it when a device enters the APD state. The internal APD handling feature turns on immediately and the timer starts with the current timeout value for each device in APD.