Can't get VMWare ESX 3.5 to see ESL-712e

[KenMacEachern]

I have two new blades running ESX 3.5.0 connected to my SAN. They do not seem to be able to see my tape library. I have two existing servers running 3.0.2 that are working OK. All systems were set up and zoned the same way.

On the new systems, if I go into the QLogic BIOS utility, I can see my controllers. They show up as the first three devices. If I go into the VMWare Infrastructure client, I don't see any part of my libarary. I did notice that the SCSI IDs in there start at 3 instead of 0 like on my working servers. It appears that VMWare knows the devices are there, it just ignores them.

Needless to say, I can see no tape devices from the VMWare Linux console. When I try running 'devbra -dev', I get nothing.

Any ideas?

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi Ken,

Do you see anything in the output of the command "dmesg" from the VMware Service console...?

Cheers,

Rob

[KenMacEachern]

I can see the messages for the EVA disks, but nothing for the tape drives.

On the working system I see entries for each of the 12 tape drives in my library.

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

I would probably sanity check that the zoning configuration is correct as a first step...

Cheers,

Rob

[KenMacEachern]

Pretty sure the zoning is good. I added the two new servers host access in Command View TL on the library. Both ports in both servers showed up in the 'Add known Host/HBA' pulldown for Secure Manager.

If I reboot either server and check the QLogic BIOS utility (scan fibre devices) the controllers from my tape library appear as the first thre entries on the list.

As far as I can tell the tapes are available but VMWare won't see them. Anyone using 3.5.0?

[Jlindberg]

Hi Ken.

I believe that FC Tapelibraries is not supported in ESX3.5. (but was supported in ESX3.0.x)
iScsi should be supported though.

Check the VMware HCL to be sure.

//Joel

[Sebastian.Koehler]

The ESX Kernel will filter all not supported devices, like FC tape drives and changers. If you have a look at the VMWare document "Virtual Machine Backup Guide" you will find...

You can back up virtual machine data by running a backup server within a virtual machine that is connected to a tape drive or other SCSI based backup media attached to the physical system.

When using this method, keep in mind the following:
* VMware supports attaching SCSI drives to the ESX Server using Adaptec SCSI adapters. Using other adapters, such as LSI MPT Fusion SCSI, is not supported.
* If you are using a tape drive library (versus using a standalone tape drive), the
library must be multitarget, and not multi LUN.
* Set the tape drives virtual target ID in the virtual machines configuration to be the same as the physical target ID.

If you look at the current EBS matrix - page 32 lists supported combinations for virtual environents.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/ebs/pdf/EBSMatrix-0809.pdf

As you can see, there are some better ways to backup the VMs right now. (Data Protector VMware Integration or VCB)

If you like to do something unsupported, you can have a look at the following link.

http://www.boche.net/blog/?p=115

Regards,
Sebastian