To provide guidance regarding disk replacement in vSAN environments.

Symptoms:
One or more disks have failed in a vSAN cluster, requiring replacement

VMware vSAN 6.7.x
VMware vSAN 6.1.x
VMware vSAN 6.0.x
VMware vSAN 8.0.x
VMware vSAN 6.6.x
VMware vSAN 7.0.x
VMware vSAN 6.5.x
VMware vSAN 6.2.x
VMware vSAN 6.x

Before to replace a failed disk in a vSAN cluster, please ensure that the following requirements apply:

• Disk must be certified for use with vSAN per the vSAN Compatibility Guide 
  • Cache disk replacements must be certified for cache use
  • Disk must be certified for vSAN configuration in use (hybrid/all-flash)
• Disk capacity should ideally be the same as the one being replaced. 
  • If the same size is not available, the next size up is acceptable
• Disk performance and endurance classes must be the same or higher when compared to the original disk

See Identifying specific disk failure in a vSAN deduplication cluster for more information
See How to manually remove and recreate a vSAN disk group using esxcli for more information

When replacing a failed capacity tier disk without Deduplication and Compression make sure to remove the failed disk from the disk group prior to pulling the disk from the host. See Replace a Capacity Device for more details.

When replacing a failed cache tier disk or a capacity tier disk with Deduplication and Compression the entire disk group needs to be removed from vSAN prior to replacing the failed disk. See Replace a Flash Caching Device on a Host & Adding or Removing Disks with Deduplication and Compression for more details.

Impact/Risks:
Failure to follow requirements may result in undesired operation with outcomes ranging from poor performance up to and including data loss.