Hi all,
It's been a while since I worked with FC based storage so forgive me if this is a silly question!
I remember back in the days of ESX 3.5 when building a host it was strongly recommended that you disconnect your HBAs as the the ESX 3.5 installer was prone to wiping your FC LUNs during the install.
Is this still the case? If I'm adding a shiny new ESX5.1 host in to an existing cluster do I need to disconnect it from the FC connected SAN during the build?
Thanks
Chris
No, During the installation of ESXi, it scans all storage controller and storage/luns connected to the server. The ESXi installer provides user intervention screen to select the storage that you like to install ESXi and installation proceeds on the selected disk.
If you're using scripted install, make sure you mention the right VMHBA device in the KS file and remove the firstdisk option. So that even if the FC controller device driver loaded first by ESXi, KS file picks up the right VMHBA for installation.
If you have add new ESX 5.1 no need disconnect it just assign lun for ESX 5.1 ..from Storage tab and scan the device..
Also check..this link
Yours, Phillips
Strug,
I have done hundreds of these type of installs. In fact I do a fresh install almost everytime a new version comes out. I always have all my lun presented without any problems. I also boot from SAN making it more fun. Just make sure you don't choose the wrong lun to install ESXi because then you will loose data. If you have a lun without VMFS on it the installer will not mark it with a star. Just make sure everything matches and check it twices before you install. If your worried you will make a mistake zone out the shared storage to be sure.
Thanks,
J
No, During the installation of ESXi, it scans all storage controller and storage/luns connected to the server. The ESXi installer provides user intervention screen to select the storage that you like to install ESXi and installation proceeds on the selected disk.
If you're using scripted install, make sure you mention the right VMHBA device in the KS file and remove the firstdisk option. So that even if the FC controller device driver loaded first by ESXi, KS file picks up the right VMHBA for installation.
To be safe and make sure you don't run into trouble, do the zoning for just one HBA. Once the ESXi is installed which will have native multipathing installed, you can zone the rest of the paths. So that way your ESXi will know that though there are many paths its just one LUN its writing to.
As Gortee said it has never caused a problem but issues don't occur everyday right? So to stay on the safer side do as i mentioned above