VMware Cloud Community
HughBorg707
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Virtual drive on eSATA drive won't mount.

I have a Dell 2650 ESX 3.5 server running with a 1TB eSATA drive as a storage unit for dumping off daily differential backups. The eSATA card is a Sil3114 chipset.

All was working well until one of my VMs running Backup Exec 12.5 was doing a backup job of a regular 2003 Server running on a Dell 2850 box. Its been running fine for a while. In this case the VM got hung up and I eventually had to shut it down and reboot the VMWare server.

All the other VMs came up fine except for this one. Once I edited the properties and removed the eSATA virtual drive, the VM boots up fine. The error I get is that it can't mount the virtual drive image because of an "invalid argument".

Is there a tool I can run that can test and correct errors that might be causing the problem?

Thanks

Reply
0 Kudos
10 Replies
Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

I am not sure what is going on but the request is a bit confusing. I would assume the following:

VMFS on eSATA driver? VMDK on the VMFS?

Was the eSATA over 90% full? > 31000 files?

What does the following show:

esxcfg-vmhbadevs -q

fdisk -l

Does the 'eSATA' drive show up in any of these? You may have to fix up the VM to point back to the eSATA as the UUID could be messed up.


Best regards, Edward L. Haletky VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009, DABCC Analyst[/url]
Now Available on Rough-Cuts: 'VMware vSphere(TM) and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment'[/url]
Also available 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise'[/url]
[url=http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Blog_Roll]SearchVMware Pro[/url]|Blue Gears[/url]|Top Virtualization Security Links[/url]|Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast[/url]

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
Reply
0 Kudos
HughBorg707
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Greets,

Okay, yes the eSATA drive is VMFS3, and the VMDK in question is on the VMFS.

The VMDK that I have lost "contact" with was simply a virtual drive. One of my servers running on the ESX was accessing this additional eSATA drive as a data storage drive for daily differential backups. Nothing major size-wise. The physical hard drive is 1TB, but formatted it comes to 931.25GB.

Of this, I made an 800GB virtual drive. Specs are VMFS 3.31 and Block size: 4MB. This leaves 130.68GB free. (14%?).

I was able to make another virtual drive while troubleshooting of 120GB, and was able to mount it etc. I have since deleted that drive to return the free space. To me this means the physical equipment is fine, its just a problem with the VMDK.

When I try to power on the backup VM with the virtual drive attached, I get the error:

Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/4a0c9734-c2a1d850-ce-000f1f6d886a/2003 Server/2003Server_1.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on. Reason: Invalid argument.

If I click OK and disconnect that virtual drive, the VM server boots up fine.

Your command requests show this:

# esxcfg-vmhbadevs -q

vmhba2:0:0 /dev/sdb

vmhba2:1:0 /dev/sdc

vmhba32:0:0 /dev/sda

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sda1 1 121601 976759968+ fb Unknown

Disk /dev/sdb: 36.4 GB, 36419010560 bytes

64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 34731 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sdb1 * 1 100 102384 83 Linux

/dev/sdb2 101 5087 5106688 83 Linux

/dev/sdb3 5101 32087 27634688 fb Unknown

/dev/sdb4 32088 34731 2707456 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)

/dev/sdb5 34632 34731 102384 fc Unknown

/dev/sdb6 32088 32631 557024 82 Linux swap

/dev/sdb7 32632 34030 1432560 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdc: 146.8 GB, 146814664704 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 17849 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sdc1 * 1 17849 143372028+ fb Unknown

The system has a 36GB SCSI Mirror, a 146GB SCSI Mirror and the eSATA 1TB

Thanks for your help.

Reply
0 Kudos
Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

You might need to resignature the volume. See the example here - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/no_persistent_storage_after_upgrade.php. Do you see the disk if you go to Configuration \ Storage Adapters? Have you tried a rescan of storage and if so, are there any messages about snapshots in /var/log/messages?

Reply
0 Kudos
Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

What's the specific model of Sil3114 that you're using?

Reply
0 Kudos
HughBorg707
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

SIIG SATA 4-Channel RAID, this exact one: http://www.siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=SC-SA4R12-S2

I used a bracket SATA-2-eSATA adapter to connect the drive.

Reply
0 Kudos
HughBorg707
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Yes that's the thing. The eSATA card is there, and I see the virtual drive under storage. But if I right click it and try to say add to inventory, that option is grayed out.

Reply
0 Kudos
Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

Add to invertory only applies to VMX files. So if you can see the VMDK have you tried to power on the VM? Did you have to enable the resignature option to see the datastore again?

Reply
0 Kudos
HughBorg707
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I can't "add" the drive to my VM while its turned off. ESX says that it completes the add and I can click OK. When I try to pow on the VM, I get the message at the top of the page about "invalid argument" and the VM shuts off. As soon as disconnect the virtual drive and power on the VM with only its main drive, it starts right up.

I haven't had to refresh anything, although I have noticed that now the drive is showing a size of 838GB instead of just 800. I don't recall seeing it that size but it could just be a fluke. It has not been powered on long enough to add anything I think.

In the end I could just delete that drive and reset it up. I would have to recreate backup to disk folders again and lose the backups I made, but they are only from last week so no large harm there. I would just hate to do that and then find out an hour later there was an easy but not so noticable fix for the problem. Smiley Happy

Reply
0 Kudos
Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

Moved to Virtual Machine and Guest OS forum.

The 'can not' find snapshot file most likely is the culprit. You need to rehook up the snap shot tree. Continuum has quite a few posts on how to do this. Most likely you have either a faulty or missing snapshot.


Best regards, Edward L. Haletky VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009, DABCC Analyst[/url]
Now Available on Rough-Cuts: 'VMware vSphere(TM) and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment'[/url]
Also available 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise'[/url]
[url=http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Blog_Roll]SearchVMware Pro[/url]|Blue Gears[/url]|Top Virtualization Security Links[/url]|Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast[/url]

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
HughBorg707
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

I finally reached that point of spending too much time trying to fix the issue. Since I only had 1 week worth of backup data and nothing has happened since then, I just deleted the drive completely, reset it up and reconnected it to Backup Exec 12.5. It seems to be working great for now.

Thanks for all that contributed!

Reply
0 Kudos