How to unpresent SAN disk from multiple ESX hosts ?

[tommyhl]

Dear All,

We have presented multiple SAN disks to a few ESX 4.0 servers from a EVA storage.

Since one of the SAN is not required now, we want to unpresent it.

It is also confirmed there is no need to keep any data in that SAN disk, would you please advise the steps for this purpose but no need to shutdown ESX servers ?

Actually, I have tried to study the following document but it's too difficult to me. Please help.

Unpresenting a LUN containing a datastore from ESX 4.x and ESXi4.i

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101508...

Regards,

Tommy

[Troy_Clavell · Accepted solution]

really, all you need to do is ensure the LUN is empty, delete the LUN from your VI inventory.  From there, ask you Enterprise Storage Team to un-present the LUNS.  Once they have been upnpresented from the storage team, rescan your storage adapters, and the LUN should not be visible to your VI any longer.

[alefestaedist]

Even if it is not a best practice but did you tried to use the EVA console to unmap the lun  from the hosts?

if you go in the vpshere client under storage configuration of every host you will be able to delete the LUN  but, of course, till you will not unmap it from the EVA at every rescan it will present again.

Alex

[rManic]

Make sure Storage I/O control is disabled if enabled before you unpresent the LUN.

Regards

Manick

[tommyhl]

Dear All,

Thanks for all your reply.

It seems that I have to:

1) Delete the LUN
2) Disable Storage I/O Control
3) Unmap the LUN
4) Unpresent the LUN
5) Rescan the storage adapters

For rescanning the storage adapters, is there any side effect ? I mean VM no response, connection from storage disconnected for a few seconds ..etc ?

Sorry that I'm not familiar with SAN disks.

Regards,

Tommy

[Troy_Clavell]

I don't know what would be the reason to disable SIOC on the LUN, if it's emtpy, but....

Rescanning the storage adapters won't impact your guests.  You just want to ensure presentation to your enviornment has been disolved.

[rManic]

Storage array will keep present this lun to the cluster even after unpresent if it not disabled.

[Troy_Clavell]

Since we don't have Enterprise Plus licensing, it's not an issue for us regarding SIOC, so i'll take your word for it.