Getting MSA2312fc SAN storage to be seen in vCenter

[stuartpace]

New to this product so bear with me...I have a couple of 2312fc SANs, which I have set up with IPs, and set up the fibre link to the EMC switches we have. My problem is that I don't know how to get the storage on the SANs to be seen as LUNs within VMware vCenter. If anyone has some advice I'd be grateful!

[Uwe Zessin · Accepted solution]

You need to create a 'virtual disk' first - that means binding multiple disk drives together to form a 'RAID set' with a RAID level.

From this capacity you can create one or more 'volumes', but remember that VMware ESX requires that those are smaller than 2 TeraBytes.

Add host entries for the servers - you can see their Fibre Channel adapter WWNs in the VI-Client under Configuration -> Storage Adapters. Then, map the volume(s) to the host(s).

Next, perform a RESCAN on those adapters. You _should_ see the volumes from the MSA in form of one or more SCSI LUNs.

Most likely there is no data on it, so go to Configuration -> Storage and select "ADD STORAGE" on the first ESX server to create a partition table and VMFS datastore.

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
DO *NOT* perform an "ADD STORAGE" on any remaining servers!!
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

Just do a rescan and it should pick up the datastore.

[stuartpace]

Thanks Uwe, lifesaver!