MSA 2040 - extending Volume used as datastore in ESXi 6.7

[TigerRool10-1]

Hi All,

Recently I extended the size of a volume on the MSA 2040.  The volume is used as a DataStore in my ESXi 6.7 environment.  Using vCenter 6.7.

I assummed that this increase would be automatically seen in VMWARE. However it was not. 

On close inspection, using vSphere web client, I could see that the "device" displayed the correct new increased size but the Datastore on this device still was the old size.

Eventually I got this solved using the steps in this post https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2046610 . Very tricky steps and probably if you got wrong - these steps could have disasterous consequences.

However, I come from a NetApp environment (an enterprise NetApp environment)  and when a LUN was extended at the storage side the new size automatically appeared in VMWARE (and that was vmware 5.5!)

Is this (having to manually extend the datastore using esxi command line) a limitation of the MSA2040 - or did I get unlucky?

Ta.

[SUBHAJIT KHANBARMAN_1]

MSA2040 volume expansion is block level activity and this is online process. No need to stop Host IO. The same volume already presented to ESX Host but here question is VMFS filesystem extend for the datastore.

I don't think file system extend automatically possible. Please find the VMWare ESX6.7 process to extend VMFS file system,

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.7/com.vmware.vsphere.storage.doc/GUID-D57FEF5D-75F1-433D-B337-E760732282FC.html

The article you have shared seems completely different activity "Recreating a missing VMFS datastore partition in VMware vSphere 5.x and 6.x (2046610)"

Hope this helps!
Regards
Subhajit

I am an HPE employee

If you feel this was helpful please click the KUDOS! thumb below!

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[TigerRool10-1 · Accepted solution]

HI Subhajit,

Yeah you are correct the link that I posted does "seem" to have no relationship to what I did.  It was only part of the solution this is what I had to do to solve the problem.  This is exactly what I had to do:

0. Increase the volume size on the MSA using the SMU

Now logon to the ESXi host and issue the following commands (only have to do on one esxi host in the vmware cluster) :

1.partedUtil fixGpt "/vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600c0ff00029475d0e5a605b01000000"

2.partedUtil getUsableSectors /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600c0ff00029475d0e5a605b01000000

Make a note of the large number

3./etc/init.d/storageRM stop

Stops the storage monitor (has no affect on the running esxi system)

4. run this command
offset="128 2048"; for dev in `esxcfg-scsidevs -l | grep "Console Device:" | awk {'print $3'}`; do disk=$dev; echo $disk; partedUtil getptbl $disk; { for i in `echo $offset`; do echo "Checking offset found at $i:"; hexdump
-n4 -s $((0x100000+(512*$i))) $disk; hexdump -n4 -s $((0x1300000+(512*$i))) $disk; hexdump -C -n 128 -s $((0x130001d + (512*$i))) $disk; done; } | grep -B 1 -A 5 d00d; echo "---------------------"; done

5. partedUtil setptbl /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600c0ff00029475d0e5a605b01000000 gpt "1 2048 2539061214 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 0"

(based on information ontained from ruinning command 4.)

6. vmkfstools --growfs "/vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600c0ff00029475d0e5a605b01000000:1" "/vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600c0ff00029475d0e5a605b01000000:1"

7. /etc/init.d/storageRM start
(restart the storage monitor)

You are also correct - no down time was required - I was able to do all this with the VM's running on the Datastore.

However the point I'm trying to make is that in a NetApp environment you do not have to extend the VMFS file system - it happens automatically.  You extend the volume on the MSA and immediatley VMFS is the correct size. (no need to manually extend)

thanks for taking the time to reply.

[TigerRool10-1]

Hi There

This problem (extending a volume containing esxi 6.7 datastores) might be an incompatibility between the esxi 6.7 and the firmware on the MSA 2040, GL225R003. (I do have a similiar issue when I add a new disk group to a Pool)

Checking out with VMWARE/HPE

[SUBHAJIT KHANBARMAN_1]

If you talk about compatibility then ofcourse MSA2040 not compatible with ESX6.7 because HPE not yet tested this. So any behavior is unpredictable and there is no official support from HPE with this setup. You can get that details from SPOCK,

https://h20272.www2.hpe.com/spock2/cont/configsetresultview?repositoryId=270867&navId=0&source=Constraint

I am still interested to see NetApp is using what kind of technology where VMFS extend happens automatically. Do you have any document or link where it can be shown that after expand of LUN size in NetApp block level corresponding datastore VMFS extend happens automatically.

Hope this helps!
Regards
Subhajit

I am an HPE employee

If you feel this was helpful please click the KUDOS! thumb below!

***********************************************************************************

[TigerRool10-1]

Hi Subhajit,

Your question about Netapp.  NetApp was preseting the storage to esxi as NFS (not iSCSI).

This is why there was nothing to do on the vSphere side in the Netapp environment.  I was not the storage admin at the last environment; the storage team simply increased the size of the LUN at their side and thats all thats required.  Apparently in NFS the LUN is actually a file on the storage side - so once the file size is inreased on the storage side vsphere sees the new file size automatically!

reagrds.