1) you don't have documentation and are adding a new host and you want to be consistent
2) are doing a hardware change and are not sure if replacing a SD card or disks could also remove ESXi
Understanding this means you need to understand how ESXi partitions whatever disk device you gave it for installation. ESXi creates several partitions, and if there's free space, will create a VMFS partition on the remaining disk space and call it datastoreX. From the vCenter/ESXi console, the administrator is mostly looking at datastores, not realizing they are partitions.
Datastores are type VMFS partitions, and the ESXi installation files are stored on partitions of type vfat. When we ask ESXi where it's installed, the answer is a partition; however, we are probably more interested in getting the disk information. Typically, this means we need to translate the partition to the naa ID of the disk.
Fastest way i've found:
You need three (for just device info) or four commands if you want to know what datastore was also created on that same disk device. Follow the colors to know what to use for command inputs:
1 ~ # esxcfg-info -b
dea75b72-115e5271-3e7b-9b3ef7301455
2 ~ # esxcfg-scsidevs -f | grep dea75b72-115e5271-3e7b-9b3ef7301455
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:5 /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:5 dea75b72-115e5271-3e7b-9b3ef7301455
3 ~ # esxcli storage core device list -d naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5
Display Name: Local DELL Disk (naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5)
Has Settable Display Name: true
Size: 6673408
Device Type: Direct-Access
Multipath Plugin: NMP
Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5
Vendor: DELL
Model: PERC H710
Revision: 3.13
SCSI Level: 5
Is Pseudo: false
Status: on
Is RDM Capable: false
Is Local: true
Is Removable: false
Is SSD: false
Is Offline: false
Is Perennially Reserved: false
Queue Full Sample Size: 0
Queue Full Threshold: 0
Thin Provisioning Status: unknown
Attached Filters:
VAAI Status: unsupported
Other UIDs: vml.02000000006b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5504552432048
Is Local SAS Device: false
Is USB: false
Is Boot USB Device: false
No of outstanding IOs with competing worlds: 32
Now you know the Display Name, Size (MB, meaning the above is 6.36TB), Vendor and Model of the device where ESXi was installed (in the case of a RAID disk, you get the controller details).
However, you may still not be sure of what that device is. Since we tend to think of datastores, we can issue one more command to find out which VMFS datastore is on that same disk:
4 ~ # esxcli storage vmfs extent list | grep naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5
RAID6-9x1TB-SAS 54255423-f706a47a-6e39-90b11c4fcfc5 0 naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 3
And there you have it. You probably remember which virtual disk ties to a datastore name.
Sadly, I haven't yet found a way to assure you that you have picked the right device, if, for example, you have two identical virtual drives. I wish there was a command in racadm that showed the naa (SasAddress) of a virtual disk, but I have not found it. The closest I found was
racadm raid get vdisks -o
and it doesn't show the SasAddress, although it's clearly shown in the ESXi installation steps (this is from another server so the naa IDs don't match, but you see my point):
By the way, getting the naa identifier of a physical disk from racadm is easy
racadm raid get pdisks -o -p name,SasAddress,MediaType
and very useful for VSAN - this post by @sebastiangrugel shows it well.
Other ways
Googling around I found two related KBs:
KB2014558 tells us the type of installation, but not where it was installed. However, it's a good idea to check the installation type, just in case this host was booted off PXE.
KB2030957 is useful. It will tell you the device, but if you were trying to figure out what datastore it relates to, it doesn't do that and you do the 4th command above.
Here are a few commands related to this.
Good command to show the bootbank , altbootbank and scratch partitions
~ # ls -l /
total 525
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 49 Sep 30 2014 altbootbank -> /vmfs/volumes/6308247d-8d9ec099-ae26-5ec2d9ba9e00
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Sep 30 2014 bin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 49 Sep 30 2014 bootbank -> /vmfs/volumes/dea75b72-115e5271-3e7b-9b3ef7301455
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 300059 Aug 23 2014 bootpart.gz
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Jun 3 09:29 dev
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Jun 3 08:35 etc
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Sep 30 2014 lib
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Sep 30 2014 lib64
-r-x------ 1 root root 14040 Sep 29 2014 local.tgz
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Sep 30 2014 locker -> /store
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Sep 30 2014 mbr
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Sep 30 2014 opt
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 131072 Jun 3 09:29 proc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Sep 30 2014 productLocker -> /locker/packages/5.5.0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Aug 23 2014 sbin -> /bin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 49 Sep 30 2014 scratch -> /vmfs/volumes/54255423-287d3e20-5dd5-90b11c4fcfc5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 49 Sep 30 2014 store -> /vmfs/volumes/5425541a-bbf00056-e4c2-90b11c4fcfc5
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Sep 30 2014 tardisks
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Sep 30 2014 tardisks.noauto
drwxrwxrwt 1 root root 512 Jun 3 09:01 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Sep 30 2014 usr
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Sep 30 2014 var
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Sep 30 2014 vmfs
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Sep 30 2014 vmimages
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Aug 23 2014 vmupgrade -> /locker/vmupgrade
All these are a good way of seeing the partitions and their different formats, and the disk devices.
~ # df -h
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
VMFS-5 557.5G 212.5G 345.0G 38% /vmfs/volumes/RAID10-4x300GB-SSD
VMFS-5 6.4T 1.2T 5.2T 18% /vmfs/volumes/RAID6-9x1TB-SAS
VMFS-5 1.1T 392.5G 722.7G 35% /vmfs/volumes/RAID10-8x300GB-SSD
vfat 4.0G 28.7M 4.0G 1% /vmfs/volumes/54255423-287d3e20-5dd5-90b11c4fcfc5
vfat 249.7M 157.3M 92.4M 63% /vmfs/volumes/dea75b72-115e5271-3e7b-9b3ef7301455
vfat 249.7M 8.0K 249.7M 0% /vmfs/volumes/6308247d-8d9ec099-ae26-5ec2d9ba9e00
vfat 285.8M 193.4M 92.4M 68% /vmfs/volumes/5425541a-bbf00056-e4c2-90b11c4fcfc5
~ # esxcli storage filesystem list
Mount Point Volume Name UUID Mounted Type Size Free
------------------------------------------------- ------------------ ----------------------------------- ------- ------ ------------- -------------
/vmfs/volumes/54290d18-1f6d577a-44e2-90b11c4fcfc5 RAID10-4x300GB-SSD 54290d18-1f6d577a-44e2-90b11c4fcfc5 true VMFS-5 598611066880 370453512192
/vmfs/volumes/54255423-f706a47a-6e39-90b11c4fcfc5 RAID6-9x1TB-SAS 54255423-f706a47a-6e39-90b11c4fcfc5 true VMFS-5 6989522403328 5715596935168
/vmfs/volumes/54290d55-396ddecc-89f2-90b11c4fcfc5 RAID10-8x300GB-SSD 54290d55-396ddecc-89f2-90b11c4fcfc5 true VMFS-5 1197490569216 776033271808
/vmfs/volumes/54255423-287d3e20-5dd5-90b11c4fcfc5 54255423-287d3e20-5dd5-90b11c4fcfc5 true vfat 4293591040 4258988032
/vmfs/volumes/dea75b72-115e5271-3e7b-9b3ef7301455 dea75b72-115e5271-3e7b-9b3ef7301455 true vfat 261853184 96870400
/vmfs/volumes/6308247d-8d9ec099-ae26-5ec2d9ba9e00 6308247d-8d9ec099-ae26-5ec2d9ba9e00 true vfat 261853184 261844992
/vmfs/volumes/5425541a-bbf00056-e4c2-90b11c4fcfc5 5425541a-bbf00056-e4c2-90b11c4fcfc5 true vfat 299712512 96935936
~ # esxcli storage core device partition listDevice Partition Start Sector End Sector Type Size
------------------------------------ --------- ------------ ----------- ---- -------------
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 0 0 13667139584 0 6997575467008
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 1 64 8192 0 4161536
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 2 7086080 15472640 6 4293918720
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 3 15472640 13667139551 fb 6989653458432
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 5 8224 520192 6 262127616
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 6 520224 1032192 6 262127616
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 7 1032224 1257472 fc 115326976
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 8 1257504 1843200 6 299876352
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 9 1843200 7086080 fc 2684354560
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807902555b244 0 0 2339373056 0 1197759004672
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807902555b244 1 2048 2339373023 fb 1197757939200
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb806fa1c66c62d 0 0 1169686528 0 598879502336
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb806fa1c66c62d 1 2048 1169686495 fb 598878436864
~ # esxcli storage core device partition showguid
Device Partition Layout GUID
------------------------------------ --------- ------ --------------------------------
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 0 GPT 00000000000000000000000000000000
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 1 GPT c12a7328f81f11d2ba4b00a0c93ec93b
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 2 GPT ebd0a0a2b9e5443387c068b6b72699c7
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 3 GPT aa31e02a400f11db9590000c2911d1b8
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 5 GPT ebd0a0a2b9e5443387c068b6b72699c7
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 6 GPT ebd0a0a2b9e5443387c068b6b72699c7
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 7 GPT 9d27538040ad11dbbf97000c2911d1b8
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 8 GPT ebd0a0a2b9e5443387c068b6b72699c7
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5 9 GPT 9d27538040ad11dbbf97000c2911d1b8
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807902555b244 0 GPT 00000000000000000000000000000000
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807902555b244 1 GPT aa31e02a400f11db9590000c2911d1b8
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb806fa1c66c62d 0 GPT 00000000000000000000000000000000
naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb806fa1c66c62d 1 GPT aa31e02a400f11db9590000c2911d1b8
~ # esxcli system visorfs ramdisk list
Ramdisk Name System Include in Coredumps Reserved Maximum Used Peak Used Free Reserved Free Maximum Inodes Allocated Inodes Used Inodes Mount Point
------------ ------ -------------------- --------- ----------- --------- --------- ----- ------------- -------------- ---------------- ----------- ---------------------------
root true true 32768 KiB 32768 KiB 532 KiB 544 KiB 98 % 98 % 8192 4096 3654 /
etc true true 28672 KiB 28672 KiB 184 KiB 216 KiB 99 % 99 % 4096 1024 463 /etc
tmp false false 2048 KiB 196608 KiB 4 KiB 228 KiB 99 % 99 % 8192 256 3 /tmp
hostdstats false false 0 KiB 1078272 KiB 12704 KiB 12892 KiB 98 % 0 % 8192 32 5 /var/lib/vmware/hostd/stats
snmptraps false false 0 KiB 1024 KiB 0 KiB 0 KiB 100 % 0 % 8192 32 1 /var/spool/snmp
~ # ls -alh /vmfs/devices/disks
total 17176196976
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Jun 3 09:25 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 512 Jun 3 09:25 ..
-rw------- 1 root root 0 Jun 3 09:25 mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L1
-rw------- 1 root root 557.8G Jun 3 09:25 naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb806fa1c66c62d
-rw------- 1 root root 557.7G Jun 3 09:25 naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb806fa1c66c62d:1
-rw------- 1 root root 1.1T Jun 3 09:25 naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807902555b244
-rw------- 1 root root 1.1T Jun 3 09:25 naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807902555b244:1
-rw------- 1 root root 6.4T Jun 3 09:25 naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5
-rw------- 1 root root 4.0M Jun 3 09:25 naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:1
-rw------- 1 root root 4.0G Jun 3 09:25 naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:2
-rw------- 1 root root 6.4T Jun 3 09:25 naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:3
-rw------- 1 root root 250.0M Jun 3 09:25 naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:5
-rw------- 1 root root 250.0M Jun 3 09:25 naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:6
-rw------- 1 root root 110.0M Jun 3 09:25 naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:7
-rw------- 1 root root 286.0M Jun 3 09:25 naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:8
-rw------- 1 root root 2.5G Jun 3 09:25 naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:9
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Jun 3 09:25 vml.0000010000766d68626133323a303a31 -> mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 36 Jun 3 09:25 vml.02000000006b8ca3a0e704b3001bb806fa1c66c62d504552432048 -> naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb806fa1c66c62d
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Jun 3 09:25 vml.02000000006b8ca3a0e704b3001bb806fa1c66c62d504552432048:1 -> naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb806fa1c66c62d:1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 36 Jun 3 09:25 vml.02000000006b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807902555b244504552432048 -> naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807902555b244
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Jun 3 09:25 vml.02000000006b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807902555b244504552432048:1 -> naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807902555b244:1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 36 Jun 3 09:25 vml.02000000006b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5504552432048 -> naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Jun 3 09:25 vml.02000000006b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5504552432048:1 -> naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Jun 3 09:25 vml.02000000006b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5504552432048:2 -> naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Jun 3 09:25 vml.02000000006b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5504552432048:3 -> naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Jun 3 09:25 vml.02000000006b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5504552432048:5 -> naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Jun 3 09:25 vml.02000000006b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5504552432048:6 -> naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Jun 3 09:25 vml.02000000006b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5504552432048:7 -> naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:7
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Jun 3 09:25 vml.02000000006b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5504552432048:8 -> naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Jun 3 09:25 vml.02000000006b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5504552432048:9 -> naa.6b8ca3a0e704b3001bb807e52a66aad5:9
Good article :)
ReplyDeleteglad you liked it :)
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