Archive for the ‘ESXi5.1’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2020/01/20
Rephrased from [WayBack] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers – Google+:
If you install a virtual machine, ensure the disk controller and disks are SCSI based.
This has many advantages, including:
- speed (usually the SCSI drivers can be paravirtualised)
- hot addition of new disks
It holds for virtually any virtualization platform including all non-ancient (less than ~10 year old) versions of:
- VMware (Workstation, Viewer, but I expect this also to work on vSphere, ESXI, Fusion)
- Hyper-V
- KVM (and therefore Proxmox)
- VirtualBox
Based on my notes in the above link and the links below:
Note this isn’t just for Linux guests/hosts: Most guests (including Windows) can do a SCSI bus re-scan and detect new SCSI devices.
The trick here is that the guest must already have a virtual SCSI controller (adding that will require a reboot of the guest).
Then adding a new SCSI disk on that controller from any host (Windows, Mac, ESXi, vSphere) should work fine.
–jeroen
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Posted in ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, Fusion, Hyper-V, KVM, Power User, Proxmox, View, VirtualBox, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, VMware Workstation | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2019/05/24
Some wizardry: [WayBack] vmkfstools | virtualhobbit.
This includes:
- finding which VMFS partitions are there the hard way
- initialising partitions from known good data
vmkfstools -V (yes, capital V is for VMFS rescan, as lowercase v is for verbose)
Found after reading [WayBack] Datastore not mounted after reboot of ESXi5.5 |VMware Communities
Then found this:
That solved my problem!
# esxcfg-volume --list
Scanning for VMFS-3/VMFS-5 host activity (512 bytes/HB, 2048 HBs).
VMFS UUID/label: 532cd010-6e8c01d1-45be-001f29022aed/Raid6SSD
Can mount: Yes
Can resignature: Yes
Extent name: naa.600605b00aa054a0ff000021022683ae:1 range: 0 - 1830143 (MB)
# esxcfg-volume --mount 532cd010-6e8c01d1-45be-001f29022aed
Mounting volume volume 532cd010-6e8c01d1-45be-001f29022aed
And there it was:
# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
...
VMFS-5 1.7T 1.6T 169.6G 91% /vmfs/volumes/Raid6SSD
...
Note you can mount non-persistent (--mount) or persistent (--persistent-mount) by both UUID and label, so there are four choices for mounting:
esxcfg-volume --mount UUID
esxcfg-volume --mount label
esxcfg-volume --persistent-mount UUID
esxcfg-volume --persistent-mount label
–jeroen
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Posted in ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2019/05/09
For my own ference:
disk space under VMFS-3 is organized according to four resource types. They are : blocks, sub-blocks, pointer blocks, and file descriptors. Resources are grouped into clusters, which form cluster groups. Every resource type is administered by one or a number of system files. Lets have a look at what those abbreviated file names stand for:
- fbb.sf = file block bitmap.sf
- fdc.sf = file descriptor cluster.sf
- pbc.sf = pointer block cluster.sf
- sbc.sf = sub-block cluster.sf
- vh.sf = volume header.sfs
- dd.sf = scsi device description.sf
The VMFS-5 uses one more system file:
- pb2.sf = pointer block 2.sf
Source: [Archive.is] VMFS metadata files
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Posted in ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2019/05/07
Two posts with interesting commands to help digging through your hba/disk/datastore configurations from the console:
One day I will write a script that – per datastore – lists all the devices related to it including their HBA and LUN.
For that, I will likely need these references:
For now this works:
- Get the list of data stores (note the
Device Name column has the NAA_ID you need below):
esxcli storage vmfs extent list
- Get the path information to find
HBA, Channel, Target and LUN:
esxcli storage core path list --device NAA_ID
- Get the list of HBAs:
esxcli storage core adapter list
- Get device details (including
Model and Revision):
esxcli storage core device list --device NAA_ID
The example below (with most important output bolded) shows a drive connected to a SAS3008 based controller which storcli cannot access (nor MegaCli), but MegaRAID Storage Manager (MSM) can.
MSM allowed me to find the serial number of the drive by the Target Transport Details value 4433221106000000 as being on Slot number 6 (which seems to indicate Target numbers are 1-based whereas LUN is 0-based).
# esxcli storage vmfs extent list
Volume Name VMFS UUID Extent Number Device Name Partition
------------------------------ ----------------------------------- ------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------
...
ST6000VX0001-1SH 59a33f7b-66df7c00-11b0-0cc47aaa9742 0 naa.5000c50087762d1b 1
# esxcli storage core path list -d naa.5000c50087762d1b
sas.500304801ce1d700-sas.4433221106000000-naa.5000c50087762d1b
UID: sas.500304801ce1d700-sas.4433221106000000-naa.5000c50087762d1b
Runtime Name: vmhba0:C0:T7:L0
Device: naa.5000c50087762d1b
Device Display Name: Local ATA Disk (naa.5000c50087762d1b)
Adapter: vmhba0
Channel: 0
Target: 7
LUN: 0
Plugin: NMP
State: active
Transport: sas
Adapter Identifier: sas.500304801ce1d700
Target Identifier: sas.4433221106000000
Adapter Transport Details: 500304801ce1d700
Target Transport Details: 4433221106000000
Maximum IO Size: 4194304
# esxcli storage core adapter list
HBA Name Driver Link State UID Capabilities Description
-------- ------------ ---------- -------------------- ------------ ----------------------------------------------------------------------
vmhba0 lsi_msgpt3 link-n/a sas.500304801ce1d700 (0000:01:00.0) Avago (LSI Logic) Fusion-MPT 12GSAS SAS3008 PCI-Express
...
vmhba32 vmkusb link-n/a usb.vmhba32 () USB
# esxcli storage core device list --device naa.5000c50087762d1b
naa.5000c50087762d1b
Display Name: Local ATA Disk (naa.5000c50087762d1b)
Has Settable Display Name: true
Size: 5723166
Device Type: Direct-Access
Multipath Plugin: NMP
Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.5000c50087762d1b
Vendor: ATA
Model: ST6000VX0001-1SH
Revision: VN02
SCSI Level: 6
Is Pseudo: false
Status: on
Is RDM Capable: true
Is Local: true
Is Removable: false
Is SSD: false
Is VVOL PE: false
Is Offline: false
Is Perennially Reserved: false
Queue Full Sample Size: 0
Queue Full Threshold: 0
Thin Provisioning Status: unknown
Attached Filters:
VAAI Status: unsupported
Other UIDs: vml.02000000005000c50087762d1b535436303030
Is Shared Clusterwide: false
Is Local SAS Device: true
Is SAS: true
Is USB: false
Is Boot USB Device: false
Is Boot Device: false
Device Max Queue Depth: 32
No of outstanding IOs with competing worlds: 32
Drive Type: physical
RAID Level: NA
Number of Physical Drives: 1
Protection Enabled: false
PI Activated: false
PI Type: 0
PI Protection Mask: NO PROTECTION
Supported Guard Types: NO GUARD SUPPORT
DIX Enabled: false
DIX Guard Type: NO GUARD SUPPORT
Emulated DIX/DIF Enabled: false
–jeroen
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Posted in ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, Power User, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2019/04/30
On my research list: [WayBack] bash – aliasing cd to pushd – is it a good idea? – Unix & Linux Stack Exchange
It has a nice discussion on complements to pushd/popd/cd/dirs including a very nice set of navd scripts that eases the navigation of the directory stack.
I found it because the ESXi busybox does not have pushd and popd and a cd won’t work from inside a shell script: [WayBack] linux – Why doesn’t “cd” work in a bash shell script? – Stack Overflow
It also made me find out that the ESXi busybox does support cd - to go to the previous directory. More info on that cd syntax is at [WayBack] bash – Difference between “cd -” and “cd ~-” – Unix & Linux Stack Exchange
–jeroen
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Posted in *nix, bash, Development, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | Leave a Comment »
