need to recreate a storage container with existing one after redeploy DSM?

Question

Hi Expert,

I am using DSM with VVOL for VMware ESXi. That is working fine.

However after reinstall vCenter server and DSM, the existing VVOL in esxi is always showed as "Inaccessible" and "Inactive".

Check the VASA Provider in vCenter server, and the Protocol Endpoint in ESXi are all working fine.

Does it need to create a new Storage Container with existing Storage Container in DSM? Because the old existing Storage Container in the new DSM are showes as "The Storage Container is not managed by the Data Collector".

DELL-Sam L · Answer

Hello xqiu,

In most cases when you get this error what you need to do is to remove the VASA provider in DSM and then add it back again. If that doesn’t resolve your issue which Compellent system do you have, what is the current version of firmware, & what version of DSM are you using?

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

DELL-Bob Mi · Answer

I suspect you will not be able to recover your Storage Container.

From page 182 of the Dell Storage Manager 2016 R3 Administrator’s Guide
ftp://customer:Y3V2s-uH@ftp.compellent.com/DOCUMENTS/680-017-026 DSM 2016 R3 Admin Guide.pdf

Unregister a VASA Provider
Unregister a VASA provider to remove it from vCenter.
Prerequisites
CAUTION: The VASA provider must be unregistered before you to initiate any of these tasks:

Any action related to uninstallation, migration, upgrade, reinstalling of Storage Manager on same host with same IP address
Uninstalling Storage Manager with the intention of reinstalling on another host
Changing the Storage Manager FQDN
Changing the Storage Manager IP address

Unregistering VASA will affects control plane operations on virtual volume VMs and datastores which are in use. It does not affect data transfer between an ESXi host and the respective SAN storage.

Unregistering the VASA provider results in powered-off VVol VMs being shown as inaccessible and datastores as inactive. To avoid prolonged control plane down time, minimize the period where the VASA provider remains unregistered. After re-reregistration, there could be a delay for powered-off VMs and datastores to recover from being inaccessible and inactive respectively.

bqproductions · Answer

How critical is the data? The data is not lost even if its not accessible to vCenter anymore.

The easiest way would be to take a snapshot of the volume and then create a view volume.

The view volume will be accessible outside the container and available to map to a server for data recovery / backup.

Compellent

need to recreate a storage container with existing one after redeploy DSM?

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