Cannot access vdisk on eva

[awinkel]

I tried to access a vdisk at an eva3000 from a virtual server.

The disk is 400Gb and we use it for about two years without any problems at our Windows servers.

After installing three ESX (3.5) servers and set up a virtual server I cannot access the vdisk from a virtual server.

The ESX servers recognize the LUN and when I edit the settings of the virtual server I can select the disk.

In disk management of the virtual server I can see the disk but Windows gives the message that it's an "unknown disk" and the space is "unallocated".

I've added the disk by doing:

- Edit setting of the virtual server

- Add --> Hard Disk

- RAW device mappings

- Select the LUN

- Store with virtual machine

- Physical

- SCSI ID

- Finish

Does anybody has any idea what goes wrong???

[aldin]

does some other server access that disk, it looks like some other server locks that disk for himself.

[CBischoff]

The EVA 3000 is not supported with ESX 3.5!

Maybe this is the reason why you have problems...

Never tryied ESX3.5 on an unsupported EVA.

[awinkel]

As far as I know yet the disk is locked by our microshit windows cluster just like Aldin said.

When I present a LUN which is not in use by an another server anything goes well.

[aldin]

if some disk was in cluster resources it can not be used by other machines like normal disk it must be removed from cluster resources first and than can be used as "normal" disk, and can be added to other machines.

[DaveD]

You might want to try setting the connection type required for VMware. The 3.01 SAN Config guide shows the settings for EVA 3000. Naturally you need to unpresent the previous vdisk from whatever it was connected to before presenting to the ESX. It may or may not recognize the NTFS partition but will most likely try to format it as VMFS. I havent' tried this, so I don't know what it will do.

Here is the section describing the Custom Connection Setting:

HP StorageWorks EVA

There are two types of HP StorageWorks EVA systems: EVA_GL, an active/passive

system, and EVA_XL, an active/active system.

Set the connection type to Custom when presenting a LUN to an ESX Server host. The

value is one of the following:

! For HP EVAgl 3000/5000 (active/passive), use the host mode type

000000002200282E.

! For HP EVAgl firmware 4.001 (active/active firmware for GL series) and above, use

the host mode type VMware.

! For EVA4000/6000/8000 active/active arrays with firmware below 5.031, use the

host mode type 000000202200083E.

! For EVA4000/6000/8000 active/active arrays with firmware 5.031 and above, use

the host mode type VMware.

Otherwise, EVA systems do not require special configuration changes to work with an

ESX Server system.

For more details, check VMware Infrastructure 3, HP StorageWorks Best Practices at

http://h71019.www7.hp.com/ActiveAnswers/downloads/VMware3_StorageWorks_

BestPractice.pdf.

Worth a try, based on your firmware.

Good Luck

//dd//