Dell VxRail: Unable to show physical view due to a failure of loading physical view data for the host

In some Dell VxRail environments, the Physical View within the VxRail plugin in the vSphere Client fails to load. Instead of displaying the physical hardware layout of a host, the UI shows an error indicating that the physical view data cannot be loaded.

When accessing the Physical View, administrators may see the above mentioned error message. This prevents visibility into the physical components of the VxRail node, such as disks, NICs, and other hardware elements.

This issue occurs in Dell VxRail clusters running VMware vSAN 7.x or 8.x and using the VxRail plugin in the vSphere Web Client. The root cause is a version mismatch between ESXi and vCenter Server.

• The ESXi host version is newer than the vCenter Server version
• VxRail relies on vSAN components, which follow strict compatibility rules
• For vSAN (and therefore VxRail), vCenter must always be at the same or a newer version than ESXi

When this compatibility requirement is violated, the VxRail plugin cannot retrieve or display the physical view data correctly.

To resolve the issue:

1. Run a VxVerify (see my How to post)
2. Upgrade vCenter Server so that its version (or build) is equal to or newer than the ESXi hosts.
3. After the upgrade, reload the VxRail plugin and verify that the Physical View is accessible again.
4. If the problem persists after version alignment, contact Dell Support, as additional VxRail-specific troubleshooting may be required.

The Physical View failure in the Dell VxRail plugin is often not a hardware issue, but a simple version alignment problem. Ensuring that vCenter is always upgraded before ESXi hosts is a best practice that prevents this and many other vSAN-related issues. Keeping component versions in sync saves time, avoids confusion, and ensures a smooth operational experience in VxRail environments.

This is it from this Blog post, if you have any question please use the comment section below.