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ESXi5 not recognizing/adding VMFS via VNXe3100
I'm having the worst time trying to successfully link VMWare Datastores created through Unisphere on the VNXe3100 to vSphere using ESXi 5.
I can create the host, the iSCSI server, and the datastore, link it up to the correct ESXi client, but when it comes to ESXi5 trying to load the VMFS I get an error about host configuration and that I need to create the datastore in vSphere. I cannot even recognize existing VMFS for VMWare in the LUN list.
Is there some sort of compatiblity issue with the latest Unisphere software and ESXi5.
I've even had trouble trying to add iSCSI storage to my Windows Server, after following all of the steps. I'm also wondering if there might be an issue with some sort of incompatiblity with my physical server - I'm using an HP Proliant DL360 G7.
I am able to add Windows Shares without problem, and so far this is the only way I've successfully been able to take advantage of the VNXe's storage....
I've had a network engineer look at it, who is using the previous version of the VMware software with similar SAN/NAS devices, and he found it baffling that our VNXe created datastore files were not being recognized at all in vSphere.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
VNxe
16 Posts
0
November 17th, 2011 13:00
1.Ensure you have a separate vSwitch for iSCSI.
2.Verify if you can vmkping to a Iscsi server and ping to VMkernel port from VNXe.
3.Do you see LUN under storage adapter ?
4.Is it a Software iscsi/ Hardware iscsi ?
5.Can you check in the dynamic discovery tab if the iscsi server IP is added ?
6.Can you validate the IQN entered in the host creation wizard..
7.What is the error message do you get ? Screenshot would be helpfull ..
8.Have you tried adding datastore manually ?
tgraves1
22 Posts
2
November 17th, 2011 14:00
Retrovertigo,
Can you please post the version of code you are running on the VNXe? We have addressed an issue which appears to be the one you are hitting in version 2.1.1.14913. In this version, we will create the VMFS datastore as VMFS3 with a block size of 8MB. If you wish to use VMFS5 or a different block size, please delete the datastore created on VMware and recreate it through the VMware management interface using the desired configuration.
A future release of VNXe will provide a tighter integration when creating the new VMFS5 datastores.
jpveen
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September 6th, 2012 02:00
Currently implementing a new VNXe3100 with 2.3.1.19462 SP1-MR3 code, connected to a new ESX5i cluster of 3 hosts.
Setup is straightforward iSCSI according to the VNXe VMware best practices: two iSCSI switches, each with a unique subnet, switch1 connected to eth2 of both SP's and switch2 connected to eth3 of both SP's. Single iSCSI vSwitch in vSphere with 2 separate portgroups (one per pNIC and pSwitch), and vmnic's binded to specific portgroups.
When creating iSCSI datastores I am still seeing the same behaviour as you described in 2011: when creating a VMware VMFS iSCSI datastore through Unisphere a VMFS3 datastore (with 8MB blocksize) is created, instead of the new VMFS5 type. And no ability to choose it when creating through Unisphere.
My advice is (until this is fixed in VNXe/Unisphere code) to create the VMware datastore from the Unisphere GUI without connecting them to the ESX-servers. (Use 'No Access' on Step 5 'Configure Host Access'.) When the wizard completes edit the 'Datastore' in Unisphere and enable host access on the ESX servers. The disks are now available to ESX, however no datastore is created. Then go to vSphere and create the VMFS5 datastore manually on the newly created and available disk.
Jan