Dell PowerFlex Manager 4.6.x CLI Reference Guide

Permanent device loss state

When the MDM has disconnected from the SDC and a volume that is mapped to this SDC has experienced an I/O error, the ESXi host continuously sends I/Os to the device to determine if the device has become accessible. This can subsequently cause a high I/O-error load that can lead to the host freezing. In cases where the device is disconnected long-term, such as when the entire MDM cluster is down during a network upgrade, the SDC can change the volume state to permanent device loss (PDL) to prevent more I/O errors coming from the ESXi.

PDL is an ESXi state, which, once enabled, is supported in PowerFlex. Once the ESXi host loses connectivity with a device, if a timeout value is reached, the ESXi is notified that the device is in a PDL state. The timeout value can be manually set. Once a device is in a PDL state, the ESXi host no longer attempts to re-establish connectivity or issue commands to the device.

Recovering a device from PDL state is described in the VMware documentation for your operating system version.

Use the instructions that match your environment.