VMware: How to identify drives in VSAN to a Physical Slot in the iDRAC

Whether identifying a failed drive or performing day-to-day maintenance, mapping vSAN disk identifiers (naa.XXX) to the physical drive slot in iDRAC is not immediately obvious. This article describes how to locate the physical slot for both SAS/SATA and NVMe drives.

First, determine whether the drive is SAS/SATA or NVMe. The SAS/SATA procedure is described first. For NVMe drives, see the NVMe Drive Identification section below.

SAS or SATA Drive Identification

1. Identify the disk's naa.ID in vCenter under vSAN Disk Management.

   

   

2. SSH into the ESXi host in question.
3. Run the following command, replacing NAA.ID with the identifier from step 1:

   esxcfg-mpath -l | grep -A 9 NAA.ID

   Example output:

    [root@vsan2:~] esxcfg-mpath -l | grep -A 9 55cd2e414decab9d
   sas.5d09466024fe8b00-sas.4433221106000000-naa.55cd2e414decab9d
      Runtime Name: vmhba3:C0:T5:L0
      Device: naa.55cd2e414decab9d
      Device Display Name: Local ATA Disk (naa.55cd2e414decab9d)
      Adapter: vmhba3 Channel: 0 Target: 5 LUN: 0
      Adapter Identifier: sas.5d09466024fe8b00
      Target Identifier: sas.4433221106000000
      Plugin: NMP
      State: active
      Transport: sas
      Adapter Transport Details: 5d09466024fe8b00
      Target Transport Details: 4433221106000000

4. Note the Target Transport Details value from the output. In this example:

   Target Transport Details: 4433221106000000

5. Open iDRAC, expand all physical disks, then search for that Target Transport Details value in the SAS Address field.

   

NVMe Drive Identification

1. Mapping the naa.ID to a physical slot for NVMe drives is more complicated. First, determine the vmhba# through vmkernel log analysis. The exact log statements vary depending on the situation.

   

2. Run lspci to determine which PCI bus number the affected drive is on.

   

3. Identify the PCI bus number for the affected drive. Use a hex-to-decimal converter to determine the slot number in iDRAC. In this example, PCI bus 89 (hex) converts to 137 (decimal).
   • Hex to Decimal Converter (RapidTables)
4. After gathering a SupportAssist Report (TSR) from the iDRAC, look at the PCI Devices section. This maps the Bus number to the Disk Bay Enclosure. In this example, bus 137 maps to Disk Bay 9.
   • PowerEdge: Export a SupportAssist Collection Using an iDRAC9

   

Additional Resources

• How to identify a slot which NVMe SSD for vSAN is installed