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rossiauj
Occasional Advisor

‎05-22-2015 12:42 PM

‎05-22-2015 12:42 PM

StoreVirtual Multipathing Extension Module for vSphere 5.5 missing VMFS datastores

Hi,

 

We have a 16-node storevirtual 4530 multis-site cluster which we use to publish VMFS datastores to our ESXi 5.5 hosts across two sites. Each site contains 8 storage nodes and 5 ESXi 5.5 hosts. Both nodes and ESXi hosts are connected through 2 x 10 Gb connections (iSCSI configured on ESXi according to HP best practices and ALB on storage nodes, FlowControl enabled on switchports, hosts and storage nodes).

 

When we use the default Storage Array Pluggin VMW_SATP_DEFAULT_AA with Round-Robin (VMW_PSP_RR) we have no problems. However when we install the recently (re)published HP StoreVirtual Multipathing Extension Module for VMware vSphere 5.5 (AT004-10518) we experience problems when the ESXi hosts are not cleanly shutdown (iLO poweroff or reset).

After the ESXi hosts are started again, we can see only a small number of the recently available VMFS datastores. I can still see the devices listed (so the luns are available to the ESXi host), only the VMFS datastores are not mounted.

 

When I run the command 'esxcli storage filesystem list' I get these errors on the ESXi host:

 

 

Error getting data for filesystem on '/vmfs/volumes/5551c88a-f3041c44-4ab8-8cdcd4afa378': Cannot open volume: /vmfs/volumes/5551c88a-f3041c44-4ab8-8cdcd4afa378, skipping.

According to some VMware KB article this could be attributed to ATS locking behaviour of the VMFS datastores after a unclean shutdown. I disabled ATS on all ESXi hosts and then rebooted them but the reboot got stuck after the message "vfc loaded successfully". It probably took half an hour or even more to boot.

 

A normal reboot or shutdown (initiated from the vSphere client) does not cause problems, only a dirty/unclean/unexpected poweroff or reset.

 

I removed the LH MEM  from the ESXi hosts and the problem has gone away. However, the LH MEM gave a very big performance boost (site aware iSCSI connections, true multipathing to all nodes in the site instead of only one gateway connection). I noticed performance and throughput boosts of up to 150 to 500 percent. It would be really bad to miss out on all that performance goodies but I just don't feel very safe with the LH MEM installed.

 

Anyone else seen this problem or know how to fix it.

 

The ESXi hosts and storage nodes are not yet running production but will be the next couple of days when we migrate our old environment to this new one. I hope this gets sorted out soon.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Jos Rossiau

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