ESXi 5.5 free version standalone hosts
iSCSI mounts with multipathing - relatively new unit with more modern hardware
CHAP not being used
I am running a few hosts that mount the same iSCSI datastores. The iSCSI LUN's are visible and writeable by all hosts. If Host1 is mapping the iSCSI LUN(VMFS5) and a VM is powered on, Host2 cannot add that VM to inventory. This is possible with NFS, but not iSCSI for some reason. Is this for a specific reason? Only when I power off the VM can I add it to both Hosts. Other than lock files just being placed in the directory, am I missing something related to the locking?
As of now, adding new esxi hosts will not allow me to add the existing VM's unless powering them down first. Again, NFS this works, iSCSI it does not. Any ideas?
This isn't specific to ISCSI but rather to the use of VMFS. NFS does not have the level of VM awareness that VMFS does and that is why it is not possible to do this with iSCSI / VMFS. There is a on disk lock for each (running) virtual machine and that is why the second host is not able to add this host to it's inventory. With vSphere HA, this lock is released when a failover needs to happen.
This isn't specific to ISCSI but rather to the use of VMFS. NFS does not have the level of VM awareness that VMFS does and that is why it is not possible to do this with iSCSI / VMFS. There is a on disk lock for each (running) virtual machine and that is why the second host is not able to add this host to it's inventory. With vSphere HA, this lock is released when a failover needs to happen.
