I am looking for a good explanation of what Unassociated Objects are, how they come about, how does vSAN deal with them, is this something that I should be monitoring, etc.
Here is the reason I am bringing this up. Last week, I had an issue with a vmware host. While fixing the issue, I stumbled across a list of unassociated objects on that vSAN Cluster. So we took a look at all 5 of our vSAN clusters and discovered approx. 15 TB of storage tied up in unassociated objects. After tracking down the location of the UID's and the vm's they were tied to, I deleted several of the unassociated objects Tuesday morning of this week. I looked at the clusters late in the day Tuesday and noticed that a few of the unassociated objects were still listed even the though the removal command appeared to work successfully earlier in the day. On Wednesday, I checked and the objects were still listed. However, I discovered something else, several of the unassociated objects listed on Tuesday were gone on Wednesday without manually removing them. In our vSAN-2 Cluster, there were 11 objects showing as unassociated on Tuesday and on Wednesday, there was only 1 item listed and this item was not listed on Tuesday. We never manually deleted these objects.
I have attempted to look for documentation and posts on Unassociated Objects and how to manage them but I haven't found anything. Based on the fact there was 14+ TB of storage used by the unassociated objects, it seems this is something I need to keep an eye on. Or understand what it is, why it occurs, how it is avoided, how it is managed, etc. Please provide insight.