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MrCurtis
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Not seeing iscsi luns, tying to add storage

I am newish to the whole vmware/iscsi thing but got it to work once.

Environment:

HB BL460c (32gb ram, 2 x 146gb local SAS HD, nc382m HBA)

vSphere ESXi 5.1

MSA2012i (12 x 1TB HD)

I created a vswitch (VMkernel Port) for port1 of the nc382m (vmnic2) and then added the virtual iscsi adapter to connect them.  A re-scan an I was able to add the available lun on the MSA as storage on the esxi host.  All was well.

But, I have created a second lun on the MSA (it is shared to all hosts) and I have re-scanned on the esxi but when I try to add storage no luns are listed.  I followed the same procedure as the initial setup which worked fine and now no joy.  I have searched the forums for ideas but so far non seem applicable, since I was able to do this for one lun but now can add a second lun.

Regards,

Marshall.

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MrCurtis
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The issue turned out to be a bug/fault in the MSA.  The MSA I am using only has a single controller/storage processor and apparently regardless of if it has one or two SPs it assigns new vDisks in a round-robin fashion between the two "potential" SPs.  So in my case the first vDisk was assigned to SP-A and worked beautifully.  The second vDisk was assigned to SP-B even-tough it didn't exist.  Therefore it was not visible to the ESXi hosts.  Upon changing "ownership" of the second vDisk to SP-A the LUN was visible on the ESXi host.

Here is a link to the HP Customer Support Advisory regarding this behavior:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&taskId=110&prodSeriesId=...

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a_p_
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Welcome to the Community,

since you can see and use the first LUN, I'd rule out configuration issue with networking and iSCSI setup.

Do you see the LUN under "Storage Adapters"?

André

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MrCurtis
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The only LUNs that are show under “storage adapters” is the currently mounted and operating LUN. The newly created LUN is not shown. (See attached, details are the same for both iSCSI Adapers)

Regards,

--Marshall

Marshall Curtis

Manager, Information Technology

Compass Housing Alliance

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a_p_
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I just checked the VMware Compatibility Guide: Storage/SAN Search and saw that the latest supported version for the MSA2012i is ESXi 4.1 Update 3. This doesn't necessarily have to be the issue, but could certainly be related.

Btw. what sizes are the LUNs you created (less or more than 2TB)?

André

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MrCurtis
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The active LUN is 1TB the missing LUN is 1TB on a 3TB Volume

Regards,

--Marshall

Marshall Curtis

Manager, Information Technology

Compass Housing Alliance

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a_p_
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Please double check the presentation on the MSA. If this is ok, run a rescan on the ESXi host's storage adapter(s) and then check the host's vmkernel log to see whether this contains some hints.

André

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MrCurtis
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Where do I find the logs

Regards,

--Marshall

Marshall Curtis

Manager, Information Technology

Compass Housing Alliance

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ScreamingSilenc
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Its found here /var/log/vmkernel.log on the ESXi host

VMware KB: Location of ESXi 5.1 log files

Please consider marking this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you found it useful.
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a_p_
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In addition to the link Mustafa provided, take a look at VMware KB: Collecting diagnostic information for VMware vCenter Server for how to collect the logs from the GUI.

André

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MrCurtis
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The issue turned out to be a bug/fault in the MSA.  The MSA I am using only has a single controller/storage processor and apparently regardless of if it has one or two SPs it assigns new vDisks in a round-robin fashion between the two "potential" SPs.  So in my case the first vDisk was assigned to SP-A and worked beautifully.  The second vDisk was assigned to SP-B even-tough it didn't exist.  Therefore it was not visible to the ESXi hosts.  Upon changing "ownership" of the second vDisk to SP-A the LUN was visible on the ESXi host.

Here is a link to the HP Customer Support Advisory regarding this behavior:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&taskId=110&prodSeriesId=...

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