When necessary, you can shut down the entire vSAN cluster.

If you plan to shut down the vSAN cluster, you do not need to manually disable vSAN on the cluster.

Procedure

  1. Power off all virtual machines (VMs) running in the vSAN cluster, unless vCenter Server is running on the cluster.
    If vCenter Server is hosted in the vSAN cluster, do not power off the vCenter Server VM.
  2. Verify that all resynchronization tasks are complete.
    Click the Monitor tab, and select vSAN > Resyncing Objects.
  3. If vCenter Server is hosted in the vSAN cluster, power off the vCenter Server VM.
    The vSphere Client becomes unavailable.
  4. Place the ESXi hosts in maintenance mode.
    Connect to the host and use the host client or esxcli command to place the host into maintenance mode with no data migration (no action).
  5. Power off the hosts after they have successfully entered maintenance mode.
  6. Power on the ESXi hosts.
    1. On the physical box where ESXi is installed, press the power button until the power-on sequence begins.
      The ESXi host starts, locates its VMs, and functions normally.

    After you power on the hosts, the vSAN cluster is automatically recreated.

    You can ignore any misconfiguration status message if you did not make network configuration changes and the vSAN cluster was working as expected before you shut down the cluster. The message disappears after at least three hosts join the cluster.
  7. Take the hosts out of maintenance mode.
  8. Restart the VMs.