Storge-offloading failed on single VM migration sanity 
using netapp ONTAP for ISCSI 
MTV 2.10.0-7 

after debug with rgolan1@redhat.com  we found the following root cause for the failure  of  storage-offloading on MTV 2.10 : 

The vmkfstools-wrapper VIB (version 0.1.1) from REDHAT is broken. After installation, the esxcli vmkfstools command is not recognized by the system. Restarting the hostd service reveals that the command's plugin (esxcli-vmkfstools.xml) fails to load due to a parsing error, specifically a missing <input-spec> element for the clone subcommand. This makes all functionality under this esxcli namespace completely inaccessible.

Environment

• Software: VMware ESXi

• Problematic VIB: vmkfstools-wrapper

• VIB Version: 0.1.1

• Vendor: REDHAT

Expected Result

• Running esxcli vmkfstools should display the available command options and namespaces.

• The hostd service should restart cleanly without any plugin loading errors.

Actual Result

The command fails immediately with the error: Error: Unknown command or namespace vmkfstools.

• The hostd restart log shows a critical plugin loading failure:

[root@f01-h09-000-r640:~] /etc/init.d/hostd restart
watchdog-hostd[2704346]: Terminating watchdog process with PID 2100510 2099779
hostd stopped.
Error loading plugin /usr/lib/vmware/esxcli/ext/esxcli-vmkfstools.xml skipping.  Error was: Unable to handle XML Plugin /usr/lib/vmware/esxcli/ext/esxcli-vmkfstools.xml.  There was an error while parsing: Unable to register the command 'esxcli vmkfstools.clone'  Error was Unable to find <input-spec> element, which is required for a command.
 

• UNKNOWN COMMAND :

[root@f01-h09-000-r640:~] esxcli vmkfstools
Error: Unknown command or namespace vmkfstools
  

• Vib version 

[root@f01-h09-000-r640:~] esxcli software vib  list  |grep -i redhat
vmkfstools-wrapper             0.1.1                                  REDHAT  CommunitySupported  2025-07-03

Root Cause Analysis 🐛

The hostd log message clearly indicates that the XML definition file for the command, located at /usr/lib/vmware/esxcli/ext/esxcli-vmkfstools.xml, is malformed. The parser cannot register the clone command because its definition is missing the mandatory <input-spec> XML tag. This single error prevents the entire vmkfstools namespace from loading into esxcli, rendering the command and all its subcommands unusable.