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Retrieving the vSAN Cluster Shutdown VMs running Pre-Check Results using PowerCLI

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The vSAN Cluster Shutdown capability has been around since vSAN 7 Update 3 and has been enhanced over the years, most recently with the introduction of a vSAN Cluster Shutdown Wizard as part of the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 release.


For those looking to automate the shutdown of their vSAN Cluster, we have a number of PowerCLI cmdlets: Get-VsanClusterPowerState, Start-VsanCluster and Stop-VsanCluster that simplifies this process in addition to the new UI interface, all leveraging the vSAN Management APIs.

Before the vSAN Cluster can initiate the shutdown workflow, it needs to make sure all VMs (excluding the vCenter Server VM that is managing the vSAN Cluster) has been powered off. For large environments, it can take some time to power off all VMs, which means you might need to poll or wait before running the Stop-VsanCluster cmdlet.

Instead of having to write additional code to wait for all your VMs to shutdown, you can leverage one of the vSAN Health Check Perspectives that will conveniently let you know when the vSAN Cluster is ready to be shutdown.

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Enhancement in VCF 9.0.1 to bypass vSAN ESA HCL & Host Commission 10GbE NIC Check

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VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0.1 is the first maintenance release for VCF 9.0, delivering a number of important fixes but also several exciting enhancements for lab deployments or running proof-of-concepts (PoC).

VCF 9.0 had already introduced a number of built-in capabilities and some neat “tricks” that makes it easier than ever to deploy a minimal VCF footprint, which you can read more about here.

However, there were still a couple of minor annoyances around vSAN ESA HCL or Host Commissioning pre-checks that could be improved to provide a better customer experience when deploying VCF for non-production usage. With feedback to VCF Engineering, I am pleased to share that these issues have now been addressed as part of VCF 9.0.1 release!

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Enhancement in VCF 5.2.2 to bypass vSAN ESA HCL Check

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When vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) is selected as the primary storage for deploying VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.x, the Cloud Builder Appliance will validate the system against the vSAN ESA HCL and will block the deployment if the hardware components are non-compliant.


For a production deployment, this should be the default experience but for non-production or proof-of-concept (POC), this can be annoying if you wish to accept the risk and proceed with using non-certified vSAN ESA hardware.

Today, the most viable workaround is to install the vSAN ESA Hardware Mock VIB , which will allow users to proceed with the deployment but it does require the additional installation step for each ESXi host.

Having spoken with VCF Engineering about this topic awhile back, they have introduced a nice enhancement with the latest release of VCF 5.2.2 that will allow users to easily bypass the vSAN ESA HCL check without requiring additional ESXi configurations changes.

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