Replace a Capacity Device

You should replace a flash capacity device or a magnetic disk if you detect a failure or when you upgrade it. Before you physically remove the device from the host, you must manually delete the device from Virtual SAN.

When you unplug a capacity device without removing it from the Virtual SAN cluster, the virtual machines on the disk group become inaccessible and the components on the group are marked as absent.

If the capacity device fails, the virtual machines become inaccessible and the components on the group are marked as degraded. See Capacity Device Not Accessible in a Virtual SAN Cluster.

Prerequisites

• Verify that the storage controllers on the hosts are configured in passthrough mode and support the hot-plug feature.

  If the storage controllers are configured in RAID 0 mode, see the vendor documentation for information about adding and removing devices.

• If you upgrade the capacity device, verify the following requirements:
  • Verify that the cluster contains enough space to migrate the data from the capacity device.
  • Place the host in maintenance mode. See Place a Member of Virtual SAN Cluster in Maintenance Mode.

Procedure

1. In the vSphere Web Client, navigate to the Virtual SAN cluster.
2. On the Configure tab, click Disk Management under Virtual SAN.
3. Select the disk group that contains the device that you want to replace.
4. Select the flash capacity device or magnetic disk, and click Remove selected disk(s) from disk group.

What to do next

1. Add a new device to the host.

   The host automatically detects the device.

2. If the host is unable to detect the device, perform a device rescan.