ESX6i U2 - KB 2133286 - 3PAR Affected?

[MichelZ]

There is a caveat in ESX6i U2 (see below).
Does anyone know if HP 3Par is affected by this?

• New Issue ESXi 6.0 Update 2 hosts connected to certain storage arrays with a particular version of the firmware might see I/O timeouts and subsequent aborts
  When ESXi 6.0 Update 2 hosts connected to certain storage arrays with a particular version of the firmware send requests for SMART data to the storage array, and if the array responds with a PDL error, the PDL response behavior in 6.0 update 2 might result in a condition where these failed commands are continuously retried thereby blocking other commands. This error results in widespread I/O timeouts and subsequent aborts.
  
  Also, the ESXi hosts might take a long time to reconnect to the vCenter Server after reboot or the hosts might go into a Not Responding state in the vCenter Server. Storage-related tasks such as HBA rescan might take a very long time to complete.

  Workaround: To resolve this issue, see Knowledge Base article 2133286.

[Gudmundsson]

It would be great if HPE (and/or VMware) would supply a list of affected storage systems and firmware versions......

Did you ever get any response to this question anywhere?

Bgrds,

Finnur

[Sheldon Smith]

There's a good overview of S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART) at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.
From what I've read and heard, it was intended to provide (as little) information (as the drive manufacturers could get away with) about the "health" of their disk drives.

Now: Looking at the previously mentioned Knowledge Base article 2133286, I have a question:
Are you using local storage?

While "...VMware recommends against disabling smartd if possible...", if there's no local storage, as a work-around, consider KB2133286 Option 1 to simply disable the ESXi host's SMART daemon.

Note: While I work for Hewlett Packard Enterprise, all of my comments (whether noted or not), are my own and are not any official representation of the company.
----------
If my post was useful, click on my KUDOS! thumb below!

[SprinkleJames]

Disabling the SMART daemon is certainly an option to ensure that this issue is avoided. But HPE ought to be able to tell their storage customers whether that's necessary with HPE storage.

It would be nice if someone from HPE would do a little research or testing and publicly confirm or deny whether this is an issue with any HPE arrays. Something similar to this blog post by Cody Hosterman would be ideal, I think.

[SprinkleJames]

It looks like this was indeed an issue with 3PAR arrays, and was fixed in 3.2.2 MU3. See Issue ID 163018 in the release notes.