I have a set of luns all defined as virtual disks in ESXi 6.0, they are all the same size and presented to the same host.
On the host side, we are deleting one of the devices, but im not sure how to match-up the correct device from ESXi editor to the device inside the OS.
I don't want to remove the wrong device.
Is there some sort of device ID or other identification I can use to make sure I "delete" the correct device from esxi?
You can try to identify the SCSI controller from devices :
Go to "/dev/disk/by-path" and run 'ls -l' from the list you should be able to see the disk against SCSI controller
In case of multiple SCSI controller is used you can track it using the PCI device ID:
usao Hi ,
I suppose you are talking about Virtual RDM which are mapped directly to the ESXi hosts and then presented to the VMs. ( Please correct me if I am wrong ).
In this case you could go to disk management in the OS and right click on the disk and then check the properties ( See attached screen shot ).
In vsphere client or web client check the disk properties to find the SCSI id and co-relate them .
Let me know if you have any questions
Kishore N
No, these are disks created on a Datastore inside ESXi.
From the host, they look like regular disks, but they are files stored on esxi datastore.
Ive freed up the 2 at the end, but when I look at ESXi, they all look the same and I don't see a way to identify which is which.
If I delete the wrong device from esxi, then I will corupt the filesystem this is sitting on.
[root@backup ~]# pvs
PV VG Fmt Attr PSize PFree
/dev/sda2 backup_vg lvm2 a--u 7.51g 0
/dev/sdb backup_vg lvm2 a--u 512.00g 0
/dev/sdc backup_vg lvm2 a--u 512.00g 0
/dev/sdd backup_vg lvm2 a--u 512.00g 0
/dev/sde backup_vg lvm2 a--u 512.00g 0
/dev/sdf backup_vg lvm2 a--u 512.00g 0
/dev/sdg backup_vg lvm2 a--u 512.00g 0
/dev/sdh backup_vg lvm2 a--u 512.00g 0
/dev/sdi backup_vg lvm2 a--u 512.00g 0
/dev/sdj lvm2 ---- 512.00g 512.00g
/dev/sdk lvm2 ---- 512.00g 512.00g
[root@backup ~]#
Try the matching between LUN ID from your storage and on this Host.
Else also each LUN have a code (like WWN if FC) under Storage Devices you can find it and also match with LUN wwn on your storage.
For example, I don't know how to identify which one of these virtual disks is /dev/sdj and /dev/sdk in the host OS.
Normally, on a SAN infrastructure, I can look at the WWID for he device, but I don't see any equivalent here since these appear to be local drives to the host.
From windows side and on the details of any disk you can match the SCSI number SCSI(0:10). please check it.
Just to clarify, all the disks are virtual devices. There are no WWID's, nor LUN ID's that I am aware of on the ESXi side.
All I see is the filename for the device, such as "backup_7.vmdk", and I don't konw how to match that to a /dev/sdXX device name in the VM.
How can I do that specifically? Which menues, windows or command-line commands will show me some sort of ID that I can reference inside the VM/OS?
also try this from windows.
When I look on the host, this is all the detail I get on the drive.
[root@backup ~]# l /dev/sd[jk]
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 144 Mar 19 12:30 /dev/sdj
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 160 Mar 19 12:30 /dev/sdk
[root@backup ~]# l -RA /dev/disk/by-id/ | grep sd[jk]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Mar 19 12:30 lvm-pv-uuid-dOct2i-p5c6-qdAe-YRD1-x4QJ-9gXE-LZ4FwN -> ../../sdj
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Mar 19 12:30 lvm-pv-uuid-GDfLLB-YyYe-eo3r-9QHK-skHm-Ah5P-hAKnSm -> ../../sdk
[root@backup ~]# l -RA /dev/disk/by-path/ | grep sd[jk]
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Mar 19 12:30 pci-0000:00:10.0-scsi-0:0:10:0 -> ../../sdj
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Mar 19 12:30 pci-0000:00:10.0-scsi-0:0:11:0 -> ../../sdk
[root@backup ~]# fdisk -l /dev/sdk
Disk /dev/sdk: 549.8 GB, 549755813888 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 66837 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Kindly try the tasks on the following: How to match and correlate Windows SCSI Disk IDs with VMware VMDKs - 2ninjas1blog.com
You can try to identify the SCSI controller from devices :
Go to "/dev/disk/by-path" and run 'ls -l' from the list you should be able to see the disk against SCSI controller
In case of multiple SCSI controller is used you can track it using the PCI device ID:
In your example, only 1 digit matches out of 4:
SCSI(0:1) -> 0:0:1:0
SCSI(1:0) -> 0:0:0:0
How does this work if you have some disks which have the same digit?
I don't think I have this exact situation, but this is more general question on how to distinguish when you do have more than 15 disks and have duplicate digits...
Thanks, but this is Linux not Windows.
you need to identify the SCSI controller from the PCI controller address, :
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 9 Mar 20 03:11 pci-0000:00:10.0-scsi-0:0:1:0 -> ../../sdb
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 9 Mar 20 03:16 pci-0000:02:02.0-scsi-0:0:0:0 -> ../../sdc