Alletra 6010 - VMware ISCSI connection issues with HPE Apollo 2000 xl190r Gen10 servers

[Endrju]

Hi everyone, 

I've got two HPE Apollo 2000 xl190r Gen10 servers and HPE Alletra 6010 storage array.

Both hosts (VMware vSphere 7..0.3 U3 installed) and the array run on the newest firmware/bios available.

The array has got two iSCSI ports: "1A" (10.0.251..19) and "1C" (10.0.251.17) configured on both controllers A and B. The Discovery IP is 10.0.251.21.

All these IPs are reachable from both hosts (reply to ping command from the hosts' CLI).

"HPE-Storage-Connection-Manager-for-VMware-7.0-7.0.2-700014" is installed on both hosts (according to HPE recomendation) so the volumes use multipathing policies as below:

Path Selection Policy NIMBLE_PSP_DIRECTED
Storage Array Type Policy VMW_SATP_ALUA

The problem is that vmware Datastores are not visible even though there are active paths to volumes and Alletra web interface shows active coonections from these hosts. However, in vCenter under "storage devices" menu all the array's volumes are "attached" but "not consumed".

I've tried also "Round Robin" multipathing policy without HPE-Storage-Connection-Manager-for-VMware plug-in but although Datastores showed up in vCenter I was unable to successfully migrate VM's to these hosts.

There is also a third host - HPE Apollo 6500 xl270d Gen10 which currently runs all the VM's with no problems at all.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Both xl190r hosts worked fine on Nimble AF20 with VMware 6.7 installed (without NCM plug-in) !

What may cause such issues ?

Thank you in advance

[Endrju · Accepted solution]

The problem has been solved.

Network configuration on the switches was not not correct.

[Sunitha_Mod]

Hello @Endrju,

That's excellent!

We are extremely glad to know you were able to find the solution and we appreciate you for keeping us updated.