In Continuation of my previous post, I will be discussing few more useful Storage Commands widely used in Troubleshooting Storage issues or Configuring & Managing Storage devices in vSphere Environment.
In most of the datacenter, Multiple Initiator ports used for Storage Traffic. These ports might come from different type of Initiator type like iSCSI/FC/FCoE.
As a vSphere Storage Admin, you might want to figure out :
- What type of initiators are installed on ESXi host
- What is Link status of Initiator Physical connectivity
- HBA Vendor or Driver information
- What is WWPN or IQN information of FC/ISCSI HBAs etc…
Check out this blog post discussing about storage commands to retrieve information Storage Devices.
IDENTIFYING HBA RELATED INFORMATION INSTALLED ON ESXi HOST
Command:
esxcfg-scsidevs -a |
Output of Command:
Explanation of this Output:
Let’s understand each field of this Storage API
1st FIELD: HBA NAME
This field shows how ESXi has enumerated each HBA devices present in it. ESXi assigns each HBA device unique numbering. For ex.
- iSCSI software Adapter identified as vmhba37
- Qlogic Adapter identified as vmhba1 & vmhba2 etc…
2nd FIELD: DRIVER
This field displays kernel Module or Driver information of respective HBA device. For ex:
Vmhba0 -> Device Driver of vmhba0 device is AHCI
Vmhba1 -> qla2xxx is Qlogic FC driver managing FC Card.
Vmhba37 -> iscsi_vmk is VMware proprietary iSCSI Kernel module for managing Software iSCSI Adapter.
3rd FIELD: LINK STATE
This field shows the link status or physical connectivity of each HBA devices present in ESXi host.
Link n/a : Link N/A means link status flag is not applicable for specific HBA device.
For ex. vmhba0 is local SCSI device so link status will not be applicable for this device.
Link Up: Link Up means HBA is UP and ready to use.
For ex. Vmhba1 is FC adapter & will be communicating to other devices in SAN network. LINK UP status shows its ready to use. No issues with HBA.
Link Down: Link Down means HBA is down and can’t be used. There could be many reasons for HBA Link to go down. Few of them are:
- Physical connectivity issue. Cable connected to HBA port might be faulty
- Switch port connected to HBA might be down.
- HBA driver is not installed properly
- HBA firmware issue causing etc…
Note: If your Initiator is down your host can’t participate in SAN Network so I found this command very useful while debugging Storage issues specific to Initiator problems.
4th FIELD: UNIQUE IDENTIFER
Sata/iscsi/fc.vmhbax -> This field displays information about Initiator Types and Its Unique Identifier.
For ex.
AHCI controller -> Advanced Host controller interface (AHCI) manages local SATA devices so ESXi clearly specifies sata.vmhbax
FC Adapter -> For FC Adapter, it shows Adapter type which is FC and Its WWPN & WWNN unique identifiers.
iSCSI Adapter -> For iSCSI adapter, it shows device type as iSCSI and its unique identifier vmhba37 enumerated by VMware.
5th FIELD: DESCRIPTION
This field displays vendor information of HBA Manufacturer and PCI ID of device. For ex:
Vmhba0 -> it shows that its INTEL Controller with PCI ID (0:0:31.2)
Vmhba1 -> it shows that vmhba1 is Qlogic 4G Card of 24xx Series with PCI ID ( 0:6:0.0)
How would you Identify whether ESXi host has Two Single Port Qlogic FC card or 1 Dual Port FC Card?
This Information can easily be identified by PCI ID information of each HBA Device.
If you look carefully at PCI ID of vmhba1 and vmhba2, the last digit differs which denotes FUNCTION ID
Vmhba1 -> 0:6:0.0 ->Device ID is 0 & Function ID is 0
Vmhba2 -> 0:6:0.1 -> Device ID is 0 & Function ID is 1
Same Device ID but different Function ID explains that its single device which means Single Card with Dual Ports.
ESXCLI COMMAND TO IDENTIFY SIMILAR INFORMATION ABOUT HBA.
Command:
esxcli storage core adapter list |
Output of this Command:
ESXCLI COMMAND TO GET DETAILED INFO ABOUT SPECIFIC ADAPTERS
Command:
esxcli storage san fc list |
Output of this Command:
Explanation of this Output
This command shows more detailed information like PortID, WWNN, WWPN, SPEED, PORT STATE about FC HBA adapters.
I found all these commands very handy & useful while debugging storage issues or configuring Storage devices like HBAs in vSphere Environment.
I would recommend each vSphere Admin to keep note of these commands and if possible add it to VMware vSphere Troubleshooting Inventory guides.
I hope you might have found this article useful & make use of these commands while troubleshooting Storage issues.
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