Cannot see LUNs after patch in ESX 3.5 host

[Blansol]

Hello

I have 2 cluster of 2 ESX 3.5 hosts, and 2 datastores each: one equalogic and one SAN DELL CX300 (both clusters are equal)

last week I patch ESX 3.5 one first cluster on both hosts without any issue (I upgraded with all patches available on vmware website, from 2009 till 2011)

then I just patched the first host on the second cluster and after aplly all patches I cant see the LUNs on the DELL CX300 datastore, the Equalogic LUNs are ok. On second host that is without patching still see both datastores, Equalogic and Dell.

I've tried to restart host and rescan vmhba3 (CX300) but it says 0 targets and no LUNs (should be 4 for a 1 TB total disk space)

Any idea how to fix this?

[marcelo_soares · Accepted solution]

As per the behavior you described, does not seems patch related. You are not even seeing the LUNs on Storage Adapters, which may mean you are having a presentation issue. Can you double check the LUNs are presented to this ESX server on the storage side?

[Blansol]

Hello Marcelo

thanks for fast response

on inventory-->datastores-->SAN_DELL_CX300_LUN01-->Hosts:  I always see the host not updated but not the updated one, sometimes I see another host without name (name in blank) and status with a red dot saying not available.

before update it worked ok.

[marcelo_soares]

I know... sound weird. But if are not seeing ths LUNs on storage adapters, is something related to presentation (only if you have an HBA that is not supported on this ESX version, maybe, but I don't think so - check HCL).

You can try to reboot a host without upgrading to check if the behavior repeats. That would prove that something else is going on or not.

[Blansol]

It shouldn't be problem of hardware compatibility because in first cluster I upgraded there was the same hardware and didnt get any problem.

I cant restart the not updated server, at least for the moment , it is running all virtual servers alone.

One new thing: when in configuration-->storage--> i press on Add Storage... it appears me to add a new storage of 1 TB (exactly the same as the SAN I cant found has), but it says me that I will loose all files in that disk, so I pressed not to add.

Is it possible that the updated host now check the SAN ok but cant take format or LUN information, and ask me to reformat it?, how could I make it to take LUN information again?

I was thinking about upgrade to ESX 4, maybe this is a good time

[tbraechter]

Ich bin zurzeit nicht im Hause. Ich kehre am 15.02.12 zurück. Bitte wenden Sie sich in dringenden Fällen an Thomas Dierkes (Thomas.Dierkes@havilog.com) oder Daniel Lübbe (Daniel.Luebbe@havilog.com).

I'm currently out of office. I will be back on 15.02.12. In urgent cases please contact Thomas Dierkes (Thomas.Dierkes@havilog.com) or Daniel Lübbe (Daniel.Luebbe@havilog.com).

[marcelo_soares]

Ah, so this changes everything. You CAN see the LUN on the storage adapters if you have this behavior.

What may be happening is that the ESX are detecting the LUN differently after you rebooted. Try this:

1. In VMware Infrastructure Client, select the host in the inventory.
2. Click the Configuration tab and click Advanced Settings.
3. Select LVM in the left panel and set LVM.DisallowSnapshotLUN to 0 in the right panel.
4. Rescan all VMFS volumes.

Check if this resolves the problem.

[Blansol]

No luck

I have tried that option and I even restarted the server too, but no luck, still the same.

[marcelo_soares]

Good, so, try this: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1002281

If this still does not work, call VMware support, they need to take a look.

[Blansol]

no luck

I will contact support and post here the solution, if there is any...

[Blansol]

Finally there was no problem of VMWare at all, it was that the fibre switches that are between SAN and ESX Hosts were blocked, restarting them all started to work properly, and no data loss happened, I made a try and updated the last Host and no problem (VMware sais that if you dont disconnect SANs from hosts on updates you can have errors with the SAN but in my case 4 updates, 0 errors with SANs connected)

Thank you Marcelo for your help, gracias