Category Archives: Storage

What is a SAN?

A pet hate of mine is when people refer to a Storage Device, such as a Fibre Attached NetApp Filer, as a SAN. It is not a SAN but a storage device that connects to a SAN. I often hear … Continue reading

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RDM Path Selection Policy (PSP) with Microsoft Clustering

Prior to vSphere 5.5 the Round Robin Path Selection Policy (VMW_PSP_RR) is not supported for the shared disks of a Microsoft cluster. You may find that the ESXi multipathing claim rules are set so that when the RDMs are discovered … Continue reading

Posted in Configuration, NetApp, VMware, vSphere | Leave a comment

VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC)

VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) is not a product but a certified configuration where a vSphere cluster spans geographical locations. This could be spread across a campus, metropolitan area or a larger area up to 200 km apart. vMSC … Continue reading

Posted in NetApp, Storage, VMware, vSphere | 1 Comment

ESXi 5.5 Hosts Not Restoring Storage Paths Following SAN Switch Failure

While performing resilience tests for a customer I identified that following the failure of a SAN switch the ESXi hosts did not restore lost storage paths once the SAN switch was brought back into service. The infrastructure in question was … Continue reading

Posted in Flex System, IBM, Storage, VMware, vSphere, XIV | 2 Comments

VMware Site Recovery Manager 5.1 and IBM N series (NetApp) SRA

I had an issue with VMware Site Recovery Manager 5.1 with the IBM N series SRA and suspect it would be the same with the NetApp SRA. SRM version installed 5.1.1, N series SRA version 2.0.1 installed. When discovering replicated … Continue reading

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Carefully Plan Filer Names and Volume Names when using VMware Site Recovery Manager with NetApp / IBM N series SRA

I have been struggling with an issue reprotecting a Protection Group within VMware Site Recovery Manager with the IBM N series (NetApp) Storage Replication Adapter. The first step Configure Storage to Reverse Direction would fail with “Error – Failed to … Continue reading

Posted in IBM, N series, NetApp, Site Recovery Manager, Storage, VMware | 10 Comments

Warning – vSphere 5 with NetApp NFS Storage

For those of you using NetApp, or IBM N series, NFS storage with VMware vSphere 5 or looking to upgrade to vSphere 5 with NetApp NFS storage beware of a NetApp bug causing the ESXi hosts to lose connection to … Continue reading

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PowerShell Script to list NetApp LUNs Mapped to Igroups

I wanted to get a list of which LUNs on my NetApp filer were mapped to each igroup. This script is not very efficient but it gets the job done in the format I wanted it in. Using Windows PowerShell … Continue reading

Posted in NetApp, Powershell | 2 Comments

PowerShell Script to report on LUNs mapped to IGroups

I had a requirement to produce a report of which of my NetApp LUNs were mapped to which of my 3 VMware vSphere clusters. Each cluster has its own Igroup on the NetApp filer: – Prod-Cluster Dev-Cluster UAT-Cluster Some LUNs … Continue reading

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Get LUN id of Raw Disk Mappings with PowerCLI

I had a need to get the LUN id of all of the Raw Disk Mappings for a particular virtual machine running on VMware vSphere. I could see this information within the vSphere Client by editing the setting of the … Continue reading

Posted in PowerCLI, Storage, VMware | 3 Comments