I recently noticed a couple of people hitting a warning message when configuring VSAN and specifically when running VSAN in a Nested ESXi environment (which is not officially supported by VMware). The warning message is displayed on the summary page of the ESXi host which states the following:
Host is in a VSAN enabled cluster but does not have VSAN service enabled
The reason you are seeing this issue is related to the amount of memory you have allocated for your Nested ESXi VM. During the VSAN Beta, the minimal amount of memory was 4GB but it looks like that has changed to 5GB with the GA of vSphere 5.5 Update 1 last week. I know we could have done better job with the error message and communicate the actual underlying issue (will ensure we have an FR filed for this).
However, the fix is quite simple, just shutdown your Nested ESXi VM and then change it to 5GB and this message will go away. It is also worth noting that as you increase the number of disks and disk groups in your ESXi hosts, there will be an increase in memory. I would highly recommend you take a look at the official VSAN Design & Sizing guide to properly size out your real VSAN environments.
For basic functional testing and education of VSAN (not including running additional VMs), running a Nested ESXi VM with 5GB will be sufficient. You can also take a look at the my VSAN Nested ESXi OVF template which can just download and install ESXi 5.5 Update 1 without any issues.
Thanks for the comment!