Question

Cannot connect ESXi 3.5 to MD3000i

Asked by: cabmup

I've spent about 6 hours on the phone with Dell to no avail.  We cannot get my Dell R710 ESXi 3.5 184236 to connect to a new MD3000i.  The R710 has the onboard Broadcom's connected to the general network, and then 2 Intel GB NIC's connected to the iSCSI network (10.0.2.xx and 10.0.3.xx).  The MD3000i has dual controllers connected to 2 switches.  2 Windows 2003 servers are successfully connected to the MD3000i.  Here's a rundown of what we have done:

1. Tried connecting by having only one of the network iSCSI connections enabled.
2. Associated the virtual disks to both the ESX group and the ESXi_1 server.
3. Shortened the iSCSI host name of the ESXi server.
4. Configured a VM to be on the iSCSI network subnet, ensuring the VM could ping the MD3000i host.
5. Rebooted the ESXi_1 server multiple times.

I am able to ping the ESXi server from a Windows machine on the same iSCSI network.  I have worked with both the Enterprise Server and the MD3000i support groups.  The next solution is to have a person in my remote office access the ESXi server, go to the unsupported mode, and trying pinging port 3260 on the ESXi.  I am hesitant to do this though in case anything goes awry.

Are there any ideas on what might be going wrong?

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Asked On
2009-10-21 at 07:36:15ID24830722
Tags

ESXi MD3000i

Topics

Storage Technology

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Hypervisor

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Answers

 

by: BAAAASSPosted on 2009-10-21 at 07:56:18ID: 25624575

How big is the LUN on the 3000i you are trying to allocate for the ESXi server?

 

by: cabmupPosted on 2009-10-21 at 07:57:52ID: 25624588

Hi BAAAASS,

I have tried both a 600GB and a 4GB partition.

 

by: BAAAASSPosted on 2009-10-21 at 08:13:11ID: 25624766

You mentioned that you have R710 Server, is there only the one or did you build a Cluster?

 

by: cabmupPosted on 2009-10-21 at 08:14:43ID: 25624782

The R710 is a standalone server at this point.  I do not have another ESXi server at the site to try connecting to the MD3000i with unfortunately.

 

by: BAAAASSPosted on 2009-10-21 at 08:25:34ID: 25624896

Keeping in mind that VMWare is not my area of expertise.
But based on the following:
* Other Servers are currently connecting fine to the SAN
* In essence the ESXi Server is running fine on its own Set of Local HDD - Please confirm

I can only guess that there are settings discrepancies between the iSCSI settings - can you double check this?

 

by: cabmupPosted on 2009-10-21 at 08:33:51ID: 25625013

Yes, the R710 has a bunch of local disks in a RAID 10 array.  My goal is to migrate the storage to the MD3000i.  It does have the DRAC installed, but it is only the Express version so it doesn't have a console option.

I've gone through the settings on the MD3000i group and the ESXi settings with the Dell Enterprise people.  The setup on ESXi seems very straightforward there are only a handful of things to do:

1. Add the storage adaptor and VMKernels
2. Enable iSCSI
3. Reboot
4. Add the host to the MD3000i
5. Setup a virtual disk and LUN
6. Have the ESXi server scan for changes

 

by: paulsolovPosted on 2009-10-21 at 14:12:45ID: 25628533

Is your vmkernel for iSCSI on a separate vswitch?  If so then you'll need to install a Manangement Console on this vswitch as well I believe, normally I do full blown and you have to install a service console on a vmkernel vswitch to get it to work correctly.  No need in Vsphere

 

by: cabmupPosted on 2009-10-21 at 14:18:49ID: 25628612

Thanks for the info.  Do you mean that I need to have a VMWare Inf Client running on the iSCSI network?  If so, I can give that a try.  My primary Windows host has the VM Client on it.  Do I just try and access the host on the iSCSI ip address (of the ESXi box)?

I have been able to setup a Ubuntu VM on the iSCSI network and it can access the MD3000i after some googling on how to do it.

 

by: paulsolovPosted on 2009-10-21 at 14:20:26ID: 25628628

Can you do a snapshot of your network config on ESX host or vCenter

 

by: cabmupPosted on 2009-10-21 at 14:29:19ID: 25628710

Here's a snapshot of the networking screen.

 

by: cabmupPosted on 2009-10-21 at 15:49:44ID: 25629303

I just got an update from Dell.  The ESXi logs are showing that the MD3000i is rejecting discovery.  This is an entry from the MD3000i log:

Date/Time: 10/21/09 3:21:50 PM
Sequence number: 982
Event type: 1808
Description: Login failure
Event specific codes: 0/0/0
Event category: Error
Component type: RAID Controller Module
Component location: iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:esxi_1
Logged by: RAID Controller Module in slot 1

 

by: nhidalgoPosted on 2009-10-21 at 16:56:01ID: 25629663

Did you open the firewall port on your ESX server for ISCSI.

after doing this enable the iscsi iniator on vmware and type the ip of one of the MD3000i controllers.
Then on the md3000i, you should see this new connection(WWN). Created a server group for this ISCSI connection. Then assign a virtual disk to this new server group.

Also do you have CHAP enabled on the MD3000i or some other authentication?

 

by: cabmupPosted on 2009-10-21 at 17:41:16ID: 25629850

Hi nhidalgo,

It is an ESXi server so there are no firewall ports to open.  We don't have any CHAP or other authentication enabled.  Other than that, all the steps you outlined have been tried every way possible.

 

by: paulsolovPosted on 2009-10-21 at 21:40:15ID: 25630859

most likely zoning on the MD3000 if it's not accepting discovery.  I remember in the ESX 3.5 I had an issue with setting up an ESX/ESXi host with capital letters which would mess up the iSCSI IQN.  If you're using capitals for the host try to redo it with lowercase letters and redo the IQN.  Make sure you configure it as an iSCSI initiator on the MD3000 and check the zoning.

 

by: cabmupPosted on 2009-11-05 at 09:44:14ID: 25751930

Thanks paulsolov.  I just got back from a week's vacation so this is still an active issue.  I'll try renaming the ESXi server and see what that does.

 

by: cabmupPosted on 2009-11-05 at 11:11:14ID: 31643967

Thanks!  I did two things:

1. Converted the ESXi server name to all lowercase.
2. Removed the "_" from the name.  It was called ESXi_1; it is now esxi1.

Rescanned and it can now see the MD3000i.  Happy days!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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