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VMware ESX can't mount existing volume
Hi,
We are running our VMware virtual infrastructure on two Dell servers and EqualLogic PS5000 series storage system.
We have set up replication between two EQL arrays and recently had a DR scenario. After we've promoted the replica to a volume, we were able to mount it on one ESX server but the other server is unable to mount it.
When we scan for new storage the iscsi initiator can see the volume but it offers only to format the drive so we are unable to mount it.
After we've promoted the replica to volume, we've made resignaturing of the volume, maybe that caused the problem?
We've tried with changing the option comparelunnumber from 1 to 0 but that didn't change anything.
Any advice?
Thanks.
Haris
Anonymous
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May 21st, 2012 09:00
You have to resignature a clone/replica or snapshot, since ESX can't mount two volumes with the same ID.
How did you replicate the volume? From the EQL group GUI or with ASM/VE (VMware edition)
hharis
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May 21st, 2012 11:00
I've replicated the volumes using EQL group GUI.
After we had failure on EQL array on the primary site, I've promoted the replica to a volume, made the resignature and connected one ESX server with the volume.
As I tried to connected the second ESX server it didn't allow me to connect to the volume, the only option what is offered is to format the volume but the volume contains the VM and I can't do that of course.
Anonymous
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May 21st, 2012 12:00
I prefer to use ASM/VE since it forces a flush to cache before the snapshot, vs whatever has made it to cache when you use the GUI.
There are two suggestions I have for you.
1.) If you have Linux you can use VMFSTOOLS to try to mount the VMFS datastore. I've had success with that when I couldn't get ESX to mount it. I was able to restore a VM from a replica that way.
2.) Open a case with VMware. Ask them to look at the metadata on that VMFS volume and see if they can reconstruct the "storage heartbeat" data. If that's not correct it won't mount the volume.