Critical vSAN Issue

[Thouvou]

Hello dear all,

We are trying to move 2TB of VMs from a nonVSAN node to a vSAN cluster.

We are trying to add a nonVSAN node with a fibre datastore attached to it to a 3node vSAN cluster, in order to SVmotion from the fibre to vSAN. The issue is that when we add the node to vSAN, a partition occurs in vSAN cluster, the vSAN gets in syncing mode, the vSAN datastore becomes 0.00TB in size and we cannot vMotion towards it. When we disconnect the nonVSAN server, everything is fixed. We have tried to add the nonVsan node to the same 3node cluster, to a new datacenter, to a new cluster and as a new host in the vCenter (different hierarchy options) without any luck...

All servers are running ESXI 6.0U3, VCSA 6.5.

Any information or idea regarding the issue would be highly appreciated,

Kind Regards

[Thouvou]

Finally thanks to Frequently asked questions about Virtual SAN / VSAN  we were able to perform vMotion by configuring  a vsan vmkernel interface on the nonVSAN host....we did not imagined that a complete configuration was needed (incl. pingable IP address)....

[TheBobkin]

Hello Thouvou,

Not to bash but looks like you did a couple of things incorrectly here.

There is no need to put a node into the vSAN cluster in order to SvMotion VMs to it.

All that is needed for XSvMotion (e.g. No common-shared datastore Storage vMotion) between hosts managed by one vCenter is a vMotion-enabled vmkernel adapter in the same subnet as the target nodes adapters (with vMotion enabled).

There are basically 3 options here:

1. Live VM XSvMotion from SAN-storage only attached to source host - this host must have vMotion-enabled vmkernel adapters configured on the source and target nodes in the same subnet (or some other method such as static-links configured).

2. Add the non-vSAN node as a compute-only node to the cluster - had some strange results with this on HOL - after configuring vSAN on a vmkernel, it appeared to be able to live XSvMotion a VM without vMotion configured on any vmkernel, maybe going over vSAN vmk, will look into this further.

3. Attach/present the SAN-based storage to the vSAN nodes and migrate from one SAN to vSAN this way.

Bob

[Thouvou]

Hello TheBobkin​,

In reply to your comments,

1.The target datastore is the vSAN, not the fiber storage. I had obviously already set up a VMkernel with vMotion enabled in the same subnet, but when I added the node to the common vCenter with the 3 vSAN nodes, the problems that I described in the 1st post started coming out (partitioning in vSAN network, vSAN datastore with 0.00TB capacity).

2. This actually worked when I created a VMkernel port on the non-vSAN node and specified a correct IP. With this way, I managed to XvMotion to vSAN from the Fiber SAN.

3. That would be the best option but the vSAN nodes did not have any FC cards...and I had to do the migration within 12 hours...

Thank you again for your time.