If the HBA card fails

[jcoop1349]

If my hba card fails how can I associate the hundreds of vm's that were on that datastore/hba with another hba card. If I simply put a new hba card into the san and associate that lun with the new hba vsphere and rescan and import the vmx vsphere will see two of the same vm's and won't allow it . I can't just storage vmotion the vm's onto another lun because the sql data base thinks that the vm's are on another lun associated with another hba card. We need a way to regain access to the hundreds of vm's that are unnavailbe do to a hba failure. I have another hba card and would like to use that one to pickup where the other one leaves off in case of a failure. It would be simple if both cards had the same wwn but I don't think that the wwn can be changed because it is unique like a mac address only for hba cards.   We are also using Vmware View, so I am not quite sure where the sql database comes into play with this scenario as well. Any suggestions would be most appreciate. Thanks guys.

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

if the HBA has been replaced, all you should need to do is to assign the new WWN to the host object on the storage system (presentation) and - depending on whether you use port or WWN zoning - change the zoning on the FC switches. No need to manually re-import the VM's to the inventory.

What I strongly recommend in a case like yours (actually I always recommend this) is to use multiple single-port HBAs instead of a single multi-port HBA.

André

[kjb007]

The key here is that the LUN hasn't changed, only the path.  As long as the LUN is in tact, it will contain the datastore, which, when connected via the new path, will be visible to the host as it was previously.  As long as that still works, all vm's will be correctly registered (they may be in orphaned/disconnected state while there are no paths to the datastore LUN).

I second a.p.'s suggestion of multiple single-ports.  Makes things simpler, and provides the redundancy the multi-port HBAs do not.

-KjB

[jcoop1349]

Wow, that was fast. Thanks guys, your answer makes a lot of sense. If we go the route of having two sans for redundancy we will definitely use this information.

Message was edited by: jcoop1349