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ISCSI Initiator problem
Another newbie problem. I've learned alot about my new Virtual world and the Dell Equal Logic box. But, I still have one fundamental problem that has to be an easy fix or something that I just don't understand technically. I want to be able to connect to a snapshot and be able to go in and grab a file if needed.
I brought the snapshot online and I even was able to mount it in vSphere so I could see it there. But, for the life of me I can't get any iscsi initiator to see the snapshot at all. I have some guesses, but I can't seem to figure out my problem.
I cannot get the initiator to see any targets...it just tells me the connection fails. I think I know why, but my networking skills are not real strong. When we had an outside company come in and install the environment, they put everything on 192.168.100.x or 192.168.101.x. Ever since I got here (over 15 years ago), our network has always been 129.1.x.x ip addresses. I am programmer for the most part and I have a networking guy who is solid at networking but I am not sure if he can answer my question either.
Anyway, when I try to add my target portals in the initiator, what IP address or name am I supposed to be pointing to? I can't ping the 192 addresses because I am on a 129.1.x.x ip, correct? So, is that why I have no chance of finding snapshots using the initiators? I know the vCenter server has a 129 address and the SAN itself has a 129 address and I have tried to connect to those but that hasn't worked.
I believe I have given permission to the snapshot to be seen by multiple initiators.
I think it is my lack of networking, but maybe not. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Ryan Kotowski
jakesterpdx
61 Posts
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March 20th, 2013 00:00
The snapshot won't be a set of files that you can view. It will be a copy of exactly what the LUN looked like when you took the snapshot, so you'll need to mount it in vSphere just like you would mount the regular LUN. Then you'll see all the VMX and VHDX files for the VMs that you snapshotted. Then you can add one into vSphere and power it on to get its files back. Keep in mind that you'll want to disable all networking on that VM so that it doesn't conflict with the real VM on the network.
Anonymous
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274.2K Posts
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March 20th, 2013 10:00
Hi Ryan,
If you are using a Windows server to connect to a VMFS volume, you will not see anything. Since the filesystem is incompatible with Windows. If you could see the "files" you would only see the containers, the VMDK files. Not the file inside the containers.
The procedure for accessing snapshot/files is:
1.) Bring snapshot online in EQL GUI and make sure it's write enabled
2.) In the ESX GUI, rescan the storage adapter and make sure it's connected OK.
(You can see that on the array or in ESX by checking the number of targets connected, it should increase)
3.) In ESX GUI, in Configuration->Storage do an "Add Storage"
4.) You should see the LUN, expand the name field to make sure you have the correct volume.
5.) If it asks you to format the volume, then stop! It's not detecting a VMFS filesystem.
6.) It should ask to resignature the volume. It will now show up in the Datastore list as "snapshot-XXXXX-original-datastore-name. You can now browse it, and if you wanted to restore an entire VMDK, e.g. your system disk is hosed, you can restore it from the snapshot.
7.) If you wanted to restore a file, you have to add that VMDK to another VM. When you start up that VM it will see that as another disks. Within the VM you can then see the files and copy them. When you're done you have to shutdown the VM to remove that snapshot'd VMDK from the VM
8.) To proprely remove the EQL snapshot, go to the EQL GUI and put the snapshot offline.
9.) In the ESX GUI, under Configuration->Storage Adapters->SW iSCSI adapter, do another rescan.
10.) Done.
rkotowski
8 Posts
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March 20th, 2013 13:00
That all makes sense. I am just trying to think of all the disaster recovery type of scenarios now that I have the virtual environment running with snapshots (Smart copies to be precise via VMWare) and I am also still doing tape backup. We have already recovered 2 servers using the smart copies where we brought back the entire server as a clone once and just flat out brought one back entirely. They were both test servers and it worked well, but it took a long time and these servers weren't big by any means. I am thinking in my head what if I just need to get one file but I had it on my 400 GB server and it took 4 to 5 hours to bring back just for one file. I might as well use the tape backups. The problem with the tape (and why I went vritual to begin with) is that I didn't have full backups of every file for all servers. Tape is quick enough to grab a single file.
Long story short, iscsi initiators made it sound like I could hook up to the files in the snapshot after I put them on line and mounted them (which seems quick enough) which is why I was very interested in this. If I could use snapshots for that purpose that would be great because I have room to run multiple snapshots a day...thus having the chance at better recovery of files that were more recently copied.
As I wrote my inital post, I was essentially at step 7 of Don's response. I will have to follow through on that and see how that functions.
There isn't another way to read the VMDK files besides Don's suggestion, correct?
Thanks a bunch,
Ryan
Anonymous
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March 20th, 2013 13:00
Sorry, Virtual Storage Manager is a Dell/EQL appliance that you can download from the Equallogic support site for free.
Version 3.5 is the current version.
Anonymous
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March 20th, 2013 13:00
Hello,
You are most welcome.
The only other method I know of is to use something like VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) (it has a new name in 5.x) That allows you to mount a VMDK to a Windows system and if the filesystem is compatible with Windows read the data. VCB is designed to mount the base volume not a snapshot. Which can be VERY dangerous. Once connected you can re-format that VMFS volume with NTFS. A number of customers I've worked have done that very thing. So I tend to shy away from that. Given it's danger I prefer to use the method I described. It's quick once you do it a couple of times. In fact if you are restoring the entire VMDK you can use copy-n-paste within the VI client to very quickly do the restore. Virtual Storage Manager v3.5 will also automate the entire process of mounting/resignature/copying the VMDK back as well.