VMware Cloud Community
sossie7
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

ESX4.0 problem talking to SAS tape drive passed through to VM from host.

I have a issue passing through a DEll (IBM) LTO4 SAS tape drive connected to the ESX4.0 host and passing this through to the VM. This is a new install. Spec's:

Dell 2950 running Vsphere 4.0

Dell SAS HBA -SAS 5/E HBA Card (scsi - non raid)

Dell/IBM LTO4 SAS tapedrive

Windows 2008 64 bit VM

Symantec BackupExec12.5 SP2 with all hot fixes.

Tape drive passed through to Win2008 VM

Backup runs for about 30 seconds then fails with:

0xe00084ee - An invalid command was sent to the storage device

I believe my problem is because the tape drive is addressed via lun rather than a scsi ID as per this doc:

0 30678449

The above doc says I should use an adaptec card - but I can't find an adaptec card with an external sas port on the HCL.

I have found references to presenting a Lun as a scsi ID for older versions of ESX - put apparently this not longer works in ESX4

Has anyone come across a method to get this sort of setup working? It must be a fairly common setup.

Simon.

Tags (4)
Reply
0 Kudos
35 Replies
sossie7
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I just received further info from our VMware presales tech as I was posting, see his message below.

Can anyone suggest SAS controllers they have had success with for SAS (SCSI) passthrough?

Previous ESX versions supported the SCSI passthrough mode for specific Adaptec cards (a 29xx chipset from memory, quite hard to come by now)

vSphere 4 added support for VMDirectPath IO for passing IO device control directly to a VM allowing the use of native drivers. The only SAS drivers supported are: LSI 3442e-R and 3801e (1068 chip based) 3Gb SAS adapters.

The other caveat is that the ESX server must be based on the new Nehalem architecture (I'm not sure if this includes the 2950's?)

I have had preliminary reports from other integration partners that they've had success with other SAS controllers on other platforms. I am intending to work with distis and hardware partners to come up with some specific known good configurations - unfortunately finding the time to do this is proving difficult.

Reply
0 Kudos
dcrush
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Simon

Do you have any news here?

Thanks

Reply
0 Kudos
sossie7
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Yes I did have a response from one of the senior VMware support engineers.

This is their response:

"Tape drives and Media changers are no longer supported for local attachment and pass through on ESX4.0 (Neither were they supported on ESX 3.5). The VM KB article floating around that describes how to attach tape drives and pass them through to guests does not refer to any version of ESX later than ESX3.0.

I was also advised that:

Tape drives are not on the Hardware compatibily list, so are therefore not supported with ESX.

I asked why there was no information to say that this sort of (very common) configuration was no longer supported, and the engineer said that they did not need to advise of something that was not supported when it was never supported in the first place.

Needless to say I am now looking at Hypervisor for our smaller sites.

Reply
0 Kudos
Lofty
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

We're having a similar situation here.

Two customers have the same hardware - Dell R710, Perc6/i (for the internal RAID), LSI 1068 based SAS card and SAS connected LTO4.

With ESXi 3.5 U4 installed (inc latest patches) at one site, I can get BackupExec 12.5 installed in a VM to see the drive and backup successfully at around 2500MB/min

With ESXi 4 installed (inc latest patches), we're not havcing any luck getting the Backup Exec 12.5 VM completing a successful backup - backups consistently fail.

I'm a bit worried to hear that the overall setup is no longer supported by VMware though? Surely this isn't the case??

Anyone got anything further on this?

Thanks

Lofty

PS. If you found my response helpful, think about awarding some points.

Thanks Lofty PS. If you found my response helpful, think about awarding some points.
Reply
0 Kudos
Dave_Mishchenko
Immortal
Immortal

Have you tried this with an Adaptec card? http://communities.vmware.com/thread/227165

Dave

VMware Communities User Moderator

New book in town - vSphere Quick Start Guide -http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/08/12/new-book-in-town-vsphere-quick-start-guide/.

Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL - http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=21.

Reply
0 Kudos
Lofty
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

No - don't have one available.

Another thing I'm reading is that VMware doesn't support this setup at all, so whether or your using Adaptec or LSI it won't matter - I'm just trying to get clarification on this from VMware directly

Thanks

Lofty

PS. If you found my response helpful, think about awarding some points.

Thanks Lofty PS. If you found my response helpful, think about awarding some points.
Reply
0 Kudos
exhorter
Contributor
Contributor

Simon, were you ever able to get this to work? I have the exact same issue with the exact same hardare and backup software on Vsphere 4. About to tear my hair out and I'm considering telling the boss "it aint going to work" but my bullish persistence is having a hard time getting to that point. Any updates to share on your end?

thanks, jerry

Reply
0 Kudos
sossie7
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

No it doesn't work with 4.0.

3.5 does, so if you can downgrade to that if you like - that is your easiest solution, bear in mind if you haven't built your VM's with ver 3.x compatibility you will have a few driver issues. I couldn't downgrade as I was using an iSCSI san and I found the performance was not as good with 3.5

I spent hours with support on this case. Their official and final word was that Tape drives are not supported for pass through on esx4.0 - they may work sometimes but if they don't tough luck.

There is a bit more info in this post:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1343299#1343299

Reply
0 Kudos
Lofty
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks All,

Yes, the official word from VMware (and the consensus by the looks of it) is that locally attached tape drives are not supported under ESX4.

I didn't get to find out if they're supported by VMware under 3.5, but we've got it working at two sites with the configuration mentioned earlier and Symantec seems to support the cnfiguration with ESX 3.5 and Backup Exec 12

Thanks

Lofty

Thanks Lofty PS. If you found my response helpful, think about awarding some points.
Reply
0 Kudos
dcrush
Contributor
Contributor

Hi

No, it works perfectly here.

-HP ML350 G5

-HP SC44GE SAS HBA

-HP LTO 920

-ESXi 4.0

-Windows 2008 64Bit VM

-Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 SP

The Passtrough works with excellent performance (about 3.2GB/min)

regards

Reply
0 Kudos
sossie7
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Out of interest, what sort of CPU do you have DCrush?

I tried a HP SC44GE card in a DELL 2950 and the passthrough didn't work in that config.

It seems that its pretty hit and miss what will work. The main thing to be aware of is that tape drive passthrough is no longer supported in ESX in versions 3.5 and above, so if you are recommending a system with this sort of config - that you haven't previously verified works, you may want include a plan B.

Reply
0 Kudos
sossie7
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I also tried an Adaptec 1045 PCIe SAS adapter in the DELL that didn't work either.

Reply
0 Kudos
dcrush
Contributor
Contributor

Ist a Intel Xeon E5430 @ 2.66

Note: I mapped just the drive, a single SCSI ID, not the whole HBA.

To map a PCI Device take a note on VMDirectPath. you need a new generation cpu for that

Reply
0 Kudos
VMowens
Contributor
Contributor

We have the same problem as the OP. Dell T610, LTO4 SAS HH. We have tried all the SAS cards Dell can provide (Adaptec and LSI) with no resolution. I am interested in eliminating the components.

sossie7 - When you tried the SC44E HP card in your Dell, was that connected to a Dell drive? What are the chances this is a problem with the drive itself instead of the card?

Does anyone know if the iSCSI-SAS bridge that Dell sells fits the external stand alone SAS drive or is it only the TL2000 \ TL4000?

I dont feel downgrading ESX is a long term solution and even though "unsupported" is not exactly ideal either, I am interested in why this works sometimes and not in other situations.

Reply
0 Kudos
sossie7
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

VMowens I only had a Dell/IBM LTO 4 tape drive for testing on the SAS card - but it didn't work on any of the Dell, HP, or Adaptec cards I tried.

I also had the clients old HP LTO2 SCSI tape drive that also I tried in the same DEll 2950/ESX4.0 (I can't remember what cards I used) - this gave the same errors in BackupExec and didn't work either. This leads me to believe that its perhaps a combination of the DELL server and ESX4.0 (as DCrush had no problems with the HP card in a HP server).

Is a Dell T610 a Nehelem CPU? I was hoping using this CPU (that supports the new VMDirectPath) would work.

Below is a snippet from the ESX logs that show what is happening while the 2008 VM is trying to talk to the Tape drive on theDell SAS 5e card, perhaps if there is someone well clued up on ESX they can perhaps give an idea of what they think is wrong:

nmp_CompleteCommandForPath: Command 0x16

(0x41000501c200) to NMP device "naa.5005076312053a44" failed on

physical path "vmhba5:C0:T0:L0" H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data:

0x5 0x49 0x0.

Aug 20 04:04:58 vmkernel: 0:05:52:10.446

cpu4:5320)ScsiDeviceIO: 747: Command 0x16 to device

"naa.5005076312053a44" failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5

0x49 0x0.

Aug 20 04:04:59 vmkernel: 0:05:52:11.562

cpu4:5321)WARNING: ScsiPath: 1959: Unable to split cmd for non-disk/non-cdrom

device (class 0x1)

Aug 20 04:04:59 vmkernel: 0:05:52:11.562

cpu4:5321)WARNING: ScsiPath: 2420: Can't split CMD 08, returning Illegal

Request to initiator 0x410008419540

Aug 20 04:04:59 vmkernel: 0:05:52:11.562

cpu4:5321)NMP: nmp_CompleteCommandForPath: Command 0x8 (0x4100050a2040) to NMP

device "naa.5005076312053a44" failed on physical path

"vmhba5:C0:T0:L0" H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x24 0x0.

Aug 20 04:04:59 vmkernel: 0:05:52:11.562

cpu4:5321)ScsiDeviceIO: 747: Command 0x8 to device

"naa.5005076312053a44" failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5

0x24 0x0.

Aug 20 04:05:06 Hostd: [2009-08-20 04:05:06.852

166CFB90 warning 'VmMisc'] Failed to find conversion from

winServer2008MediumManagement-64 to type:

vim.vm.GuestOsDescriptor.GuestOsIdentifier

Aug 20 04:05:09 vmkernel: 0:05:52:21.685

cpu4:5320)NMP: nmp_CompleteCommandForPath: Command 0x1a (0x410005087740) to NMP

device "naa.5005076312053a44" failed on physical path

"vmhba5:C0:T0:L0" H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x49 0x0.

Aug 20 04:05:09 vmkernel: 0:05:52:21.685

cpu4:5320)ScsiDeviceIO: 747: Command 0x1a to device

"naa.5005076312053a44" failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5

0x49 0x0.

Aug 20 04:05:09 vmkernel: 0:05:52:21.818

cpu4:5234)NMP: nmp_CompleteCommandForPath: Command 0x8 (0x41000506f440) to NMP

device "naa.5005076312053a44" failed on physical path

"vmhba5:C0:T0:L0" H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x8 0x0 0x5.

Aug 20 04:05:09 vmkernel: 0:05:52:21.818

cpu4:5234)ScsiDeviceIO: 747: Command 0x8 to device

"naa.5005076312053a44" failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x8

0x0 0x5.

Aug 20 04:05:11 vmkernel: 0:05:52:23.691

cpu4:4100)NMP: nmp_CompleteCommandForPath: Command 0x34 (0x410005085040) to NMP

device "naa.5005076312053a44" failed on physical path

"vmhba5:C0:T0:L0" H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x49 0x0.

Aug 20 04:05:11 vmkernel: 0:05:52:23.691

cpu4:4100)ScsiDeviceIO: 747: Command 0x34 to device

"naa.5005076312053a44" failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5

0x49 0x0.

Aug 20 04:05:30 sfcb[5599]:

storelib-GetLDList-ProcessLibCommandCall failed; rval = 0x800E

Aug 20 04:05:30 sfcb[5599]: Volume Cannot get

logical disk data from controller 1

Aug 20 04:05:30 sfcb[5599]:

storelib-GetLDList-ProcessLibCommandCall failed; rval = 0x800E

Aug 20 04:05:30 sfcb[5599]: StoragePool Cannot get

logical disk data from controller 1

Aug 20 04:05:36 Hostd: [2009-08-20 04:05:36.885

2C83EB90 warning 'VmMisc'] Failed to find conversion from

winServer2008MediumManagement-64 to type:

vim.vm.GuestOsDescriptor.GuestOsIdentifier

Reply
0 Kudos
dcrush
Contributor
Contributor

.

Reply
0 Kudos
sossie7
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

VMowens I tested vmdirectpath on a Dell 710 (should be similar to a 610 I think) and SAS tape drive, and it worked ok. Don't forget once you have assigned the PCI card to the vm, you add the tape drive to the vm in the old fashioned was as well. Follow this VMware doc:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101078...

Reply
0 Kudos
VMowens
Contributor
Contributor

sossie7 - I will give this methodology a go tomorrow and see what we find. Thanks so much for your help.

Reply
0 Kudos
TimPhillips
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I had to use an SPTI solution for direct connecting tape to VM. But now all works perfectly.

Reply
0 Kudos