Storage Policy Blank when Enabling VSAN Performance Service

By | September 22, 2016

I recently upgraded a VSAN cluster to ESXi 6.0u2 and was interested in enabling the new VSAN Performance service. I also had a net-new cluster to install.

For both instances, in Cluster -> Manage -> Health and Performance -> “Turn ON VIrtual SAN performance service” I was seeing this

 

performance-service

The storage policy is blank and you cannot click OK.

On the net-new system I tried to create a VM and saw an error that the vm or the datastore could not comply with the storage profile.I don’t have a screenshot of that screen, but I did go to the Storage Policies and viewed the Virtual SAN Default Storage Policy

error-virtual-san-default-storage-policy

The thing to look at is “Some of the data service referenced by the rule-set are currently unavailable”.

What you need to know is that VSAN has a VASA provider that is automatically registered with vCenter (these can be seen if you click on the vCenter -> Manage -> Storage Providers)

For my upgraded cluster I didn’t see the VSAN Providers show up in the list. For my net-new cluster  it was disconnected (note these clusters are different vCenters).

For my upgraded cluster, I clicked the rescan button and it found my VSAN Providers. From that point I could enable the performance service.

For my net-new cluster, I had to a bit more work.

It turned out that my issue was certificate related based on this KB.

For Windows vCenter Server:


  1. Open a command prompt in Windows vCenter server.
  2. Navigate to C:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\vmafdd.
  3. To verify the expiry date of SMS certificate, run this command:vecs-cli entry list –store SMS –-text

    You can see in my image int he “Validity” section that this cert expired last year

  4. expired-sms-cert
  5. If the certificate is expired, delete the certificate store by running this command:vecs-cli store delete –name SMS

     

  6. Restart VMware vSphere Profile-Driven Storage Service and VMware vSphere Web Client to re-generate the SMS certificate store.
  7. In the vSphere Web Client, navigate to vCenter Server > Manage > Storage Providers. Right-click on each VSAN Storage Provider (each ESXi host) and click Resynchronize.
For VMware vCenter Server Appliance for Linux:
 
  1. Log in to the vCenter Server Appliance using SSH and navigate to:/usr/lib/vmware-vmafd/bin

     

  2. To verify the expiry date of SMS certificate, run this command:vecs-cli entry list –store SMS –text

  3. If the certificate is expired, delete the certificate store by running the command:vecs-cli store delete –name SMS
  4. Restart VMware vSphere Profile-Driven Storage Service and VMware vSphere Web Client to re-generate the SMS certificate store.
  5. In the vSphere Web Client, navigate to vCenter Server > Manage > Storage Providers.
  6. Right-click on each VSAN Storage Provider (each ESXi host) and click Resynchronize.
 After I completed these steps, I could enable the performance service and provision VMs.

 

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