Synergy/Nimble/VMware Setup issue - iSCSI Initiator Mismatch

[Nick_F_2019]

I hope someone can help.  We ran into a problem with setting up an ESXi cluster on Synergy & Nimble.

The steps to reproduce are:

1. Set up OneView and VirtualConnect (our setup had 6 vNICs per server for Ethernet and 2 vNICs per server for iSCSI)
2. Set up the Nimble and connect it to OneView by going to “Storage Systems” and adding it as a new storage system by providing IP & credentials.  Configure it with the correct iSCSI VLANs
3. Create a new shared Volume on the Nimble using OneView
4. Create a Server Profile Template.  Servers have two network adapters with Function Type “ISCSI” (i.e. dependent / hardware offload iscsi adapters)
   The “iSCSI Initiator” setting (under “Advanced” at the bottom of the page) defaults to “Virtual” – see screenshot below.
5. We select to manage SAN storage in the SPT and add the Volume just created
6. Create a Server Profile from the SPT and apply it to the blades
7. Install ESXi on the blades using the correct HPE Custom image (deployed directly using iLO and the ISO image, not using an image streamer)
8. Install PSP module (Nimble NCM in this case) on ESXi
9. Configure and test all Networking in ESXi (including iSCSi)
10. Set up iSCSI initiator within ESXi
11. Set up iSCSI autodiscovery with the correct Target address and port (connectivity verified)

Effect:

1. OneView configures an iSCSI Initiator name similar to “iqn.2015-02.com.hpe:oneview-xxxxxxxxxx:xxxxxxxx”
2. The Nimble is configured by OneView to permit access to the volume from initiators with these names
3. ESXi configures its own initiator name similar to “iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:hostname-xxxxxxxx”
4. ESXi tries to connect to the iSCSI target using the initiator name “iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:hostname-xxxxxxxx”
5. Storage system denies access to the volume because it is expecting an initiator called “iqn.2015-02.com.hpe:oneview-xxxxxxxxxx:xxxxxxxx”

Workaround:

1. We manually modified the server profile for each blade to use iSCSI Initiator Name type “User-specified” and copy and pasted the VMware initiator name from ESXi.  Repeat for each server
2. Reboot all servers
3. Access to Volume is now possible from all servers.

Unfortunately all server profiles now report as inconsistent with the template due to the manual change and we are left with the task of manually editing the SP for every server added to the Synergy stack.  We wanted automatic provisioning of new servers.

How is this resolved?  Does integration with vCenter fix it?

System is a Synergy 12000 chassis populated with SY480 Gen10 rev 1 Blades.

[Krish_H]

Hello,

Could you let me know following details to check about this further.

1) What is the version of Synergy OneView used here

2) Version of ESXi & Synergy SPP used here.

I will need more details about the entire setup/ configuration to comment on this properly, 

However I think we are configuring the iSCSI intiators at 'two' levels here; One at OneView profile & other at ESXi host.

Could you try doing it at only at the OneView side (in one test server) and verify if the setup works fine?

Thanks.