I was troubleshooting storage related problems at a customer site for some time. We run into massive ESXi storage connection problems after installing a new array. Interestingly enough problems occurred on already existing storage a few hours after new array was installed. Because searching for root cause took some time, I thought it is worth to share.
Watch HBA errors in ESXi hosts with PowerCLI
I am in the middle of a troubleshooting scenario. It is about connection problems from ESXi hosts to their storage devices. Normally everything works fine but at from time to time, there are tons of errors on HBAs in hosts. Therefor I want to watch HBA errors in ESXi hosts with PowerCLI.
VMs are shown with absolute path to vmx file in vCenter
These days I had to troubleshoot a problem in a vCenter environment. A few VMs shown with absolute path to vmx file in vCenter inventory. Normally this occurs when a ESXi boots with no connection to its previous mounted storage volumes. VMs located on these volumes are shown like this in inventory. But this wasn’t the case here: VMs were running and no host was […]
PSP rule for active/standby controller arrays (like Nimble Storage)
First, what does active/standby mean. For this blog post, it means the array hast at least 2 controllers, one presents ALL LUNs to the hosts, the second controller presents NO active LUNs path to the hosts. Just in case of a manual or automatic failover, the second controller takes-over ALL LUN-presentations – and active paths. Examples of such arrays are: [very old one] HP MSA 1000 HPE Nimble […]
Cannot add 3PAR storage provider because of certification error
Normally when using a self-signed certificate you get a warning. It is also normal to accept the certificate to continue your task. These days I wanted to register a 3PAR system as storage provider in vCenter. Because of a certification error, this could not be accomplished. In this post I describe how to solve – at least my – problem.
Storage vMotion between arrays of same vendor
Recently I had to investigate an interesting behavior of ESXi hosts during Storage vMotion between two arrays of the same vendor – in this case HDS (G600 –> G700/F700). In this post I list observed symptoms and a very simple way to boost performance in this situation.
PowerCLI script to count paths to VMFS volumes
When implementing new storages or configure existing ones it is a good idea to check paths (state and amount) to volumes. When operating a few hosts using a few datastores this can be a very time-consuming task when using the GUI. Therefore I wrote the following function.
3PAR (iSCSI) – resolve high write latency on ESXi hosts
FC AFA (all flash array) 3PAR systems show quite a good latency on reads and writes. When operating an iSCSI AFA 3PAR it could happen that the systems show a rather high write latency on ESXi hosts. In this post you can read how to fix this.
How PDL (Permanent Device Loss) looks like
Some time ago differentiation between PDL (Permanent Device Loss) and APD (All Path Down) was introduced to vSphere. In a PDL situation, the hosts does not expect the device to return. PDL happens for example, when an administrator un-presents a LUN from a host. APD on the other hand is completely unplanned. By default the host tries to get the device back. Starting with vSphere […]
VVOLs in SANsymphony-V10 PSP4 [or VVOLs on a notebook]
![VVOLs in SANsymphony-V10 PSP4 [or VVOLs on a notebook]](https://vnote42.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/datacore.jpg)
With SANsymphony-V10 PSP4 DataCore introduced VMware VVOL support. In this post I write about the installation and administration of this feature. This is also a very nice way to take a running VVOL implementation on a notebook with you.
Veeam Vanguard
Veeam Legend
VMware vExpert
