Dell EMC Unity: How to add access to different ESXi hosts with the Trend Micro Deep Security or VMware Vshield deployed. (User Correctable)

Unisphere includes a dedicated Access VMware page that allows for the end-to-end discovery of a VMware vSphere environment. Information about the VMware vCenters, ESXi Hosts, Virtual Machines, and Virtual Disks is imported and displayed directly in Unisphere. The import process also registers the VMware hosts onto the Unity system so they can be granted access to LUNs, VMFS Datastores, NFS file systems or datastores, or VVol datastores.

However, the storage system allows only one VMware ESXi host registered with applications such asTrend Micro security vApp or VMware Vshield  (or ESXi hosts that contain duplicate IP address in general) simultaneously. Adding a second such ESXi host as VMware host will overwrite existing one with its all IP addresses and initiators. As a result overwritten ESXi host will lose access to the storage system.

Applications such as Trend Micro Deep Security or VMware Vshield create an internal VMkernel network interface (169.254.1.1 by default) on each ESXi host it configured. Unity assumes that all hosts should have unique set of IP address. When storage administrator tries to register such ESXi hosts when another one is already registered, a warning the new host  conflicts with exiting one is displayed because both ESXi hosts have identical internal network interface address configured. If storage administrator proceeds with new VMware host creation, the existing host will be completely overwritten in Unisphere with a new one including its all IP addresses and initiators.

Recommendation: If the user knows ahead of time that the ESXi hosts have duplicate IPs, generic hosts (ACCESS -> Hosts in GUI) should be used instead of VMware hosts (ACCESS -> VMware) to handle this case.  Storage administrator should create a generic host for each ESXi server that contains the same VMkernel IP address passing a list of IP addresses and iSCSI initiators manually excluding all conflicting internal network interfaces (like 169.254.1.1 which is default for Trend Micro Deep Security or VMware VShield solutions).

1. Avoid creating VMWare hosts when there are duplicate IPs for the ESXi servers.
2. Create generic hosts for the ESXi servers.
   1. For hosts without FC, create the Generic hosts manually excluding all conflicting internal network interfaces.
   2. For FC hosts, push registration will automatically create Generic host entries.

In case push registration is disabled, go ahead and create it manually. It is advised to wait at least 10 min to see if push registration creates the host automatically before going ahead with manual creation.

1. Provide host access to datastores using these Generic hosts.
2. Create datastores manually from the ESXi side with the disks that are discovered.

 
Recovery workaround for cases where the user is already in a DU case:

1. Remove the host access for the datastores affected.
2. Create a Generic host manually for the first ESXi host that we removed excluding all conflicting internal network interfaces.
3. Grant access to the datastores for the newly added Generic host.
4. Do a rescan of the storage adapters at the ESXi side.
5. The datastore will be mapped successfully.

Related articles: KB469656.