VC FC Errors and ESX 3.5 Servers

[jcarlson77]

Hi everyone,

Last week my SAN admin and I were working on reconfiguring some disk in our environment. When the disk work was done, I looked for the LUN on the ESX hosts and noticed that nearly all 8 of my ESX hosts in 2 c7000's are having path issues.

My SAN admin says that there is nothing wrong with the SAN and he can see every WWN.

When I look at the VMware side, I see dead paths on some links, or no paths at all (yet VM's are still running on these ESX hosts).

When I look at the VC logs, I see a lot of strange errors about the FC state being degraded or "uplink ports have different SAN fabric WWNs." However there isn't much information to go on with these warnings.

Before I open a case with HP and/or VMware, I was hoping someone out there could shed some light on these errors in the attached log.

Here is the firmware revision list.

OA - 2.41
iLO - 1.77 (all 4 servers in chassis)
VC Ethernet - 2.10
VC Fiber - 1.32

Thanks in advance.

[JKytsi]

Hi,

What happened 2009-10-11T22:30:23-05:00 ?

Does Your VCM show all OK ?

[JKytsi]

And this "uplink ports have different SAN fabric WWNs" would be something that in your VC specified SAN the uplinks are not going to same SAN. Ask your SAN admin about that.

[jcarlson77]

One of my backup ethernet networks has 2 links that are down (I suspect bad cables or not fully seated in the core switch).

Both SAN fabrics show "Degraded" but all ports are green and have an "OK" status.

Everything else looks fine.

[jcarlson77]

And this "uplink ports have different SAN fabric WWNs" would be something that in your VC specified SAN the uplinks are not going to same SAN. Ask your SAN admin about that.

Can you explain a little more about the uplinks not going to the same SAN? Would that be a FC switch configuration?

[JKytsi]

yes it would be. As in Virtual Connect You create a SAN and assign uplinks to it. All uplinks inside same VC created SAN must go to same fabric.

If You have two FC modules, You can't connect both to same fabric

[The Brit]

As pointed out by Jarkko, if you create a "SAN" in VC, and assign ports to it, then all of the assigned ports must be physically connected to the same external SAN switch.

for example if you create a single VC SAN, SAN_A for example, and assign all 4 uplink ports to it, then all 4 fibre cables MUST connect to the same external SAN (Switch)/Fabric. You cannot in this case connect ports 1 & 2 to Fabric_A and 3 & 4 to Fabric_B.

If you want to do that you should create 2 VC SANs, SAN_A1 (say) and assign ports 1 & 2 to this SAN, and a second VC SAN, SAN_A2 and assign ports 3 & 4 to it. You can now connect uplinks (ports) 1 & 2 to Fabric_A, and uplinks 3 & 4 to Fabric_B.

If you have a second VC FC module in the adjacent bay, then you can do the same there, by creating VC SANs, SAN_B1 and SAN_B2.

It IS legal to connect (for example) uplinks from both modules to the same external SAN switch, however they must be assigned in VC to different VC SANs.

Remember also, that these new SAN names must be propagated back into your Profiles to ensure that your VM's can continue to talk to their storage.

Just in case we are assuming too much, confirm that your SAN admin is seeing the VC assigned WWID's and not the Physical WWIDs.

Hope this helps.

Dave.