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jwnchoate
Contributor
Contributor

New ESX3 with MSA1500 wont see the LUNs, but other ESX2's will see LUNs

I have a new HP Blade with ESX3 loaded on an existing chassis that connects to an MSA 1500 SAN. The 3 other ESX2 boxes have been and continue to work just fine. The SAN will not 'see' the new server and the server will not see the LUN's but lists the controllers in VC. Im puzzled about the connection and what I might be missing. I did the blades 3 years ago and im rusty on my san/blade connection. Any old hands with this setup out there that can tell me where to look for connectivity/setup problems?

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BUGCHK
Commander
Commander

If the server sees the MSA controller device at LUN address 0, then basic Fabric connectivity is there.

You MUST make sure that the operating system profile on the connection is set properly. It used to be "Linux", but I have not checked for the latest firmware revisions. Finally, you must present the logical disks to the new server has well, if selective storage presentation (SSP) is enabled in the Accary Configuration Utility (ACU) or an Access Control List (ACL) has been used in the Command Line Interface (CLI). Make sure you present them through both controllers/connections.

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jwnchoate
Contributor
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I used "add connection ESX4 wwpn=xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx profile=linux offset=0" on the msa and it wont show it online afterwards.

no acl's are used.

From what I can tell, the server will not see any LUNs from the MSA. I will go into VC, select the server, choose configuration, storage, add storage and run the wizard, but it wont show any luns.

When the MSA gets the add connection command it will show a connection but it uses the wwpn as the wwnn. The add connnecton wont take a wwnn entry. Perhaps this is firmware upgrades im looking at. I just have 20 production servers on the LUNs and rebooting it would take an act of congress to get done. We are using HP Blade servers so there are no cables to connect, other than the ones already connecting the chassis to the switches.

There is no SSP enabled. This system is very small and does not require this yet. I will double check to be sure.

I want to just verify something at this point...If the connectivity between the SAN and Blade is correct, is there any configurations in vmware other than making sure the HPA is working and going to add connection on a "default" install. I dont mess with any of the advanced settings, nor do we put any ACL's on the msa. I checked the acls and it says there are none.

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Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

Drop the 'offset=0' option. There is no need for that when adding a connection.

Also, do a 'show acl' perhaps something is set and you do not realize it.

Also, verify the WWPN is the correct one between the systems. If you have multiple ports, make sure all are setup properly.

When an ESX V3 server can not see a LUN there are two causes: 1) The number of the LUN or the number of LUNs exceeds 128. 2) THere is something wrong with the LUN presentation.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky, author of the forthcoming 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', publishing January 2008, (c) 2008 Pearson Education.

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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jwnchoate
Contributor
Contributor

show acl says there are no acl's configured.

I added the offset=0 because I was trying to get this to work.

There are 2 LUNs total. 0 and 1.

My Virtual Center is in the same blade chassis and the HP diag util is saying 'loop failed' on the diag of the hba. At this point, Im going through the hp side of the coin since that shows a no connect too.

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Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

With that error it sounds like either a HBA, GBIC, Cable, or Switch issue. Check to see if there is light on both sides of the cable. That is a good way of telling if there are issues. My GBICs light up when there is light through the cable. I have one crushed cable and only one of the two possible lights are lit on my switch for the GBIC.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky, author of the forthcoming 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', publishing January 2008, (c) 2008 Pearson Education

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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jwnchoate
Contributor
Contributor

I located the problem a couple of hours ago. Had local admin take photos of rear of blade chassis and switch fabric. I found that the uplinks from the chassis to the FC switches are independent of each other and need a fiber connect for each blade server to the FC switch, this was something I did not realize. I assumed the switch chassis operated like the switch chassis for networking where the ports were uplinks for the whole system. We use the p-Class blade system and only 3 of the 8 uplink ports were connected on each side (redundancy). As soon as we got them linked the ESX saw the LUNs after I did the 'add connection ESX4 wwpn=xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx profile=linux' command.

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