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October 6th, 2016 06:00

vVols - iSCSI Protocol Endpoints not displayed on ESXi hosts

Hello,

I am using the community-supported UnityVSA to test drive vVols.  I am currently using the UnityVSA to serve several iSCSI LUNs on two ESXi hosts, and it's been working great for traditional iSCSI LUNs.  However, when I try to use vVols, no Protocol Endpoints are showing up on my ESXi hosts and my vVol datastore on the VMware side is showing as read-only, with 0 bytes for the size.  I am trying to figure out what I am doing wrong.  Here are the steps I have taken:

1)  Verified NTP time sync is working correctly on vCenter, ESXi, and Unity VSA.  Verified Unity VSA iSCSI Target IP's listed in VMware iSCSI Software Initiator "Dynamic Discovery" tab.  iSCSI is working great, since I have (2) iSCSI LUNs already working great.  No network-level issues.

2)  Configured my iSCSI hosts in the Unity VSA to "Ignore" their non-iSCSI IP addresses and Fibre Channel interfaces.  The only interfaces being used by the Unity VSA are the iSCSI interfaces (2 IP's per ESXi host).

3)  Registered UnityVSA as VASA provider in vCenter via Manage >> Storage Providers (https://emc-unity.my.lab:8443/vasa/version.xml).  The Unity is showing Online, using VASA v2.0, with iSCSI as a supported block interface.  For "supported profiles," I see "VirtualVolumeProfile."  All looks good here.

4)  Created Block vVol Datastore in the UnityVSA, associated with capability profile, and granted host access to my 2 iSCSI ESXi hosts to the vVol Datastore.  All looks green, no errors.

5)  Verified the presence of (2) Protocol Endpoints on the UnityVSA, one for each ESXi host.  All look green.  (However, these PE's don't appear to be getting propagated to the ESXi hosts themselves.)

6)  Performed a "Rescan" of the ESXi hosts several times, to rescan the iSCSI software adapters.  Also performed a "Synchronize" and "Rescan" of the Unity VASA provider in vCenter.

7)  Looked at ESXi host >> Manage >> Storage >> Protocol Endpoints, and the list is empty.  The Unity iSCSI PE's do not show up on either host.  This doesn't look right.

8)  Attempted to create VVOL datastore in vSphere Client.  (Datacenter >> Storage >> New Datastore >> VVOL >> EMC Unity VASA Provider >> EMC vVol Datastore), and it was created as read-only with 0 bytes as the size.  Because it is read-only, I get this error:

"vSphere HA failed to create a configuration vVol for this datastore and so will not be able to protect virtual machines on the datastore until the problem is resolved."

I presume this error is because the iSCSI Protocol Endpoints are not getting propagated from the Unity to the ESXi host.  Any idea where to go next for troubleshooting?

Thanks,

Bill

143 Posts

October 6th, 2016 14:00

I ended up solving my own problem, but wanted to post the solution in case anyone else runs into this.  Apparently it was related to the SSL certificate.  The SSL certificate was keyed to the IP address, not FQDN, of the Unity VSA.  Therefore VASA was not happy about the mis-match.  I changed the URL from FQDN to IP address (https://10.201.30.184:8443/vasa/version.xml), and after performing Rescans, all of the Protocol Endpoints showed up and vVols are working!!!  Hope this helps someone with the same problem.

8.6K Posts

October 7th, 2016 08:00

thanks very much for the Feedback - it helps others a lot not to just post the problem but also how it was solved

January 19th, 2018 17:00

Thank you for sharing. I love how you solve it in 5 minutes, nice work Bill.

1 Message

October 25th, 2023 15:55

I am using a Cluster with vCenter 7.0.3, 2x ESXi 7.0.3 and Unity 300, Software version 5.3.0.0.5.120 and had the same issue.

First I had to delete the certificates on the storage (https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/57165).

After successfully registering VSAN provider on the vCenter, faced the same issue with my vVols.
Changing the URL from FQDN to IP fixed it also for me.

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