Hi There,
I have a HS23 blade with an embedded ESXi 5.0 USB stick and I am having problems adding storage in the vSphere Client. The BladeCenter chassis has redundant SAS RAID modules. Using the IBM tool Storage Configuration Manager I have created a RAID 5 storage pool along with a volume on that storage pool and assigned the volume to the HS23 blade.
From previous reading I was expecting the new volume to appear in vSphere client essentially as DAS but I'm not seeing anything. Does anyone have ideas what I could have done wrong?
Bay 6 or 5? Your Word document earlier said that the volume labeled "VMstorage" is mapped to "Blade_Bay_5".
If you are confident that you have properly mapped the disk and do not see it at all when viewing your storage controllers in VMware, it's probably best to call VMware and see if their storage support can help you figure out why you can't even see the storage when viewing your controller.
Nobody?
Looks like "Nobody" is able to see your RAID ![]()
Okie,, IBM Bladecenter SAS RAID and VMware ESX has a long history. Take a look here to confirm you have the proper settings.
Again, to take out the primary questionable factors.
1. When you do a esxcfg-rescan on the vmhbaX, can you look the vmkernel.log for any errors or alerts of the storage.?
2. Is the SAS RAID need to be initialized or have been initialized?
3. Hope that there is no requirement of using custom ISO. Can you confirm what build you are using by vmware -vl
Lucky for you I have a lot of experience with this.
1. Are you sure the blade has the proper adapter installed in it? I've had people put blades in an S-chassis without the SAS adapter...
2. Are you positive you mapped the volume to the blade slot? Make sure you don't have the blade slot disabled either. SCM has an area where you can
enable and disable the internal/external mappings too.
3. In your vSphere Client, when you view the Storage Adapters for your host, do you see any storage there? Sometimes with the BC-S you will have to get your hands dirty in the command line because the ESXi hosts think the volume attached is a snapshot volume.
Follow this KB: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101138...
I, along with my peers, have always had to do this with Bladecenter S, it is ridiculous.
#esxcli storage vmfs snapshot list
Then with the output you can mount the datastores:
To mount a snapshot/replica LUN that is persistent across reboots, run this command:
# esxcli storage vmfs snapshot mount -l label|-u uuid
For example:
# esxcli storage vmfs snapshot mount -l "VMFS_1"# esxcli storage vmfs snapshot mount -u "49d22e2e-996a0dea-b555-001f2960aed8"
zXi_Gamer,
I have looked over the RSSM Host Systems attachment guide and most of the stuff in Chapter 4 seems to refer to the ESXi Host being installed on a Windows operating system but I am using an embedded USB stick.
1. Not sure what the vmhbaX is. I'm new to VMware and the CLI.
2. I'm pretty sure the volume is initialized. There are other blades in the chassis running windows OS and they all see their respective volumes fine.
3. USB stick is an IBM specific build that is supposed to work on the chassis-S. The build is 5.0 (474610).
PhillyDubs,
1. Here is the expansion card info:
| Slot | Description | Part Number | FRU Number | FRU Serial No. | Hardware Revision | Manuf. Date | UUID | Manufacturer | Manuf. ID | Product ID |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SAS Expansion Option | 81Y8515 | 81Y8516 | Y010UN2980DF | 4 | 3612 | 623C E959 F8A2 11E1 BCF1 0013 D462 0A41 | IBM (FOXC) | 20301 | 181 |
2. Volumes are mapped the same I have successfully mapped volumes to the other Windows blades in the chassis. (see attachment)
3. I have one storage adapter listed (vmhba0) which is an LSI2004 but when I do a scan it shows nothing. The type is Block SCSI.
4. esxcli stoage vmfs snapshot list returns nothing.
That's strange that you don't even see it when viewing your storage adapters. Typically you can see it there but you can't add the storage until you do a persistent forced mount a la the KB I linked.
The only other thing I can think of off the top is my head is to make sure the LUN is set as maybe LUN 1 or 2 to start with. Sometimes using LUN 0 doesn't work well as it conflicts with the CDROM or local storage of the blade.
I have HS22's using the USB stick. I've never had an issue where the storage wasn't actually seen on the adapter, only issues where you can't add the storage with "Add Storage" because of the false snapshot issue.
I wonder if you need to update the BIOS on the SAS card? This is from the firmware notes on the IBM site:
https://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/myportal/docdisplay?lndocid=migr-5090848
Fixed an issue where external stroage will not be seen by the LSI2004 controller.
Also, make sure you don't have the slot turned off for that blade:
Where do I find those views you pasted in SCM?
Where do I set the LUN number? SCM?
Blade ESXi host blade is in blade bay6 and is enabled.
I've upgraded the firmware to 1.10.12 on the LSI controller but still no storage appearing.
Bay 6 or 5? Your Word document earlier said that the volume labeled "VMstorage" is mapped to "Blade_Bay_5".
If you are confident that you have properly mapped the disk and do not see it at all when viewing your storage controllers in VMware, it's probably best to call VMware and see if their storage support can help you figure out why you can't even see the storage when viewing your controller.
BC-S SAS RAID Module > Configuration > SAS Zoning
You want to edit your current active configuration, but unless someone manually changed it there should be no reason the zoning internally would be modified from default(all enabled).
Good grief what a complete idiot I've been. When I first mapped the volume i didn't scan for new hosts so I mapped to host 5 (thinking it was the right-most host). I have subsequently scanned for new hosts and host 6 has appeared in the list so I have mapped the volume to that and all is well. Apologies for wasting your time on what was a school-boy error on my part.
