Shutting down a vSAN Cluster

I have the need to completely shut down some of my vSAN clusters for various clusters and ive been having a hard time finding the proper procedure. As of 2/16/2021 VMware released guidance here

Here are the steps i took to do it on my end. If you have the vCLS service enabled follow my other instructions here prior to starting the rest of this guide.

Disable cluster member updates from vCenter on each ESXi host in the cluster by running

esxcfg-advcfg -s 1 /VSAN/IgnoreClusterMemberListUpdates

After the above is completed run the below only on 1 of the ESXi hosts. Take note of the host

python /usr/lib/vmware/vsan/bin/reboot_helper.py prepare

Place all ESXi hosts in maintenance mode with NoAction

esxcli system maintenanceMode set -e true -m noAction

Perform the necessary maintenance. Once the hosts are back up we will run the above in reverse

Remove the maintence mode on all ESXi hosts by running

esxcli system maintenanceMode set -e false

Run the below command on the same host it was originally run

python /usr/lib/vmware/vsan/bin/reboot_helper.py recover

vSAN availability can be checked by running

esxcli vsan cluster get

Enable cluster member updates for vCenter

esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /VSAN/IgnoreClusterMemberListUpdates