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How to identify physical hard disk drives sitting in multiple SAN devices connected to a single ESXi host?

  • 20 January 2024
  • 6 comments
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A
Userlevel 4

Hi Team,

Got two question and appreciate your response.

Q1.

In my work environment, we got 3 ESXi hosts and each have connected to multiple SAN devices to store data in different locations. I need to do a mapping exercise to identify the physical HDD’s (inside each SAN device) locations to above said individual ESXi host. I can access the ESXi host from a web interface and can view the datastores connected to individual ESXi host. Further, I can retrieve basic information of  the HDDs (physical) but not an option to locate in which SAN device they are stored.

Hope my question is clear and appreciate your valuable support to obtain the best eway to perform this exercise?

Q2.

Also would like to know a tool or a mechanism to detect the health status of the physical HDD. The HDDs are in the production environment would like to know an industry best practice to determine the health status please?

Than you in advance.

 

Kind regards,

 

Andrew

 

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Best answer by coolsport00 20 January 2024, 22:04

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6 comments

coolsport00
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

For Q1, you should be able to view the SAN a particular Host is connected to via Host > Configure tab > Storage Devices, then view the paths. There's no way to see individual disks, as Datastores are chunks of storage carved out of multiple disks on an array.

Q2 - your SANs (arrays) monitors disk health status on their own. There are no monitoring tools for this I'm aware of. 

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
Chris.Childerhose
Userlevel 7
Badge +20

Another question is what is the brand and model of your SAN devices?  If you log in to the management interface UI you should see data there.

Chris Childerhose - VMCA2022 | VMCE2023 | Veeam Vanguard 7* | Veeam Legend 3* | vExpert 5* | VCAP-DCV/VCP-DCV | Object First Ace | Cisco Champion | Twitter: @cchilderhose | Blog Site – https://just-virtualization.tech
A
Userlevel 4

Thanks a lot coolsport and Chris for the prompt replies.

coolsport00
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Sure thing. 

I will also say..on my array (I use Nimble), the array UI itself doesn’t even allow me to see what disks are assigned to the Volumes/LUNs I created, because it doesn’t really matter. Arrays anymore have their own OS and they create all disks on them, generally, in a RAID 60. Then from there, you can “chunk” the whole array storage into LUNs of various sizes to fit your needs. Not sure what array you have, but most are that way anymore.

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
dloseke
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

Sure thing. 

I will also say..on my array (I use Nimble), the array UI itself doesn’t even allow me to see what disks are assigned to the Volumes/LUNs I created, because it doesn’t really matter. Arrays anymore have their own OS and they create all disks on them, generally, in a RAID 60. Then from there, you can “chunk” the whole array storage into LUNs of various sizes to fit your needs. Not sure what array you have, but most are that way anymore.

 

Machines like Dell PowerVault (and by association, I believe HPE MSA) you can find the datastore in VMware and associate it to the backing volume on the array, determine what disk pool is backing the volume, and then see which disk group or groups are backing the pool, and then see what disks are assigned to those disk groups. On a PowerStore array, it’s going to be all disks as you don’t have disk groups/pools.  The only exception I think to that one is if you’re using a combination of SCM and SSD, but mine is all SSD so I can’t confirm that.

Another exception would be if you’re using a storage array as JBOD, where you’re mapping individual disks to a host or are using the HBA as a RAID controller rather than using internal RAID controllers on the storage array itself.  However, that’s going to be far less common.

I guess my question is why?  What are you attempting to gain by determining what disk’s are backing what datastores?

Derek M. Loseke, Senior Systems Engineer | Veeam Legend 2022-2023 | VMSP/VMTSP | VCP6-DCV | VSP/VTSP | CCNA | https://technotesanddadjokes.com | @dloseke
coolsport00
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Hi @Andrew Manuja  -

Just wanted to follow up with you to see if any of the comments/suggestions above helped answer your ‘finding disk’ question? If so, to benefit others who may find your post, we ask you mark one of the comments as ‘Best Answer’.

Let us know if you have any further questions.

Thank you.

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00

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