vSAN shutdown/restart procedure

[b1izzard]

I have read through the VMware documentation on the vSAN shutdown/restart procedure and have a question.  After starting vCenter, it says to run the command below.  It isn't clear if they mean start vCenter and then immediately move on to running the command, or to wait for vCenter and all its services to start BEFORE running the command.  Does it matter either way or could it cause any issues?

Restart the vCenter Server VM.

Re-enable cluster member updates from vCenter Server with the following command.

esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /VSAN/IgnoreClusterMemberListUpdates

[TheBobkin]

Hello b1izzard

Can you link specifically what documentation you are referring to with that command?

The reason I ask is that command is normally more related to moving a vSAN cluster between vCenters or when switching from Multicast to Unicast mode and not shutting down a cluster (under normal circumstances anyway). What kind of shutdown are we talking about here? E.g. are you shutting it all down to move or do maintenance and is the vC running and stored on this cluster?

Bob

[b1izzard]

From here: Shutting Down and Restarting the vSAN Cluster

Shutting down to perform maintenance.

[TheBobkin]

So, that command (and the previous one to disable membership updates) are not set from vC but from ESXi and need to be set and unset on all nodes in the cluster.

IMO I think setting that maybe overkill and/or overly cautious as I can only see issues in very early 6.6 that could potentially cause issues from not setting it so.

In any case, I would wait until vC is up and you can connect to it via the UI before unsetting it.

Bob