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Controller upgrade - ESX LUN re-signaturing

 

 

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phigmov at gmail

Oct 28, 2009, 8:58 PM

Post #1 of 4 (2213 views)
Permalink
Controller upgrade - ESX LUN re-signaturing

Hi all,

We're planning to upgrade our controller (a 270c to a 2050ha) - my
understanding is the iSCSI LUN's will retain their identity (ie the
existing IQN strings will remain the same) however we will probably
run into the ESX re-signaturing issue.

Is there a way to avoid this as part of the controller upgrade or do I
need to go into each connected ESX host and change the value of
LVM.EnableResignature to 1 ?

Are there any other potential 'gotchas' about an in-place head
replacement ? The process itself looks fairly straightforward if all
the steps are followed through in sequence.

Thanks in advance,
Raj.


Peter.Learmonth at netapp

Oct 28, 2009, 10:29 PM

Post #2 of 4 (2151 views)
Permalink
RE: Controller upgrade - ESX LUN re-signaturing [In reply to]

Hi Raj

I'd like to refer you to NOW KB33990 (which I wrote). It covers this
scenario pretty thoroughly.
https://now.netapp.com/Knowledgebase/solutionarea.asp?id=kb33990

You're mixing two things. LUN identity consists of LUN ID and LUN S/N.
The IQN is part of the filer identity. In some versions of ONTAP, when
you swap the NVRAM card (or the whole controller including NVRAM) the
LUNs may get a new serial number. The IQN should stay the same,
provided you use the same root volume. If you configure from scratch,
using the root vol from the factory, for example, you will get a new
IQN. However, the new IQN is not what triggers VMFS metadata mismatches
and resignaturing.

The best way to prevent resignaturing is to make sure the LUNs have the
same S/N before and after. Before you shut down the FAS270, get the
output of lun show -v, especially the serial numbers. Once you swap
controllers, before bringing up ESX, make sure the LUNs have the
original S/N.

To maintain the configuration and identity of the FAS270 when you swap,
before you boot for the first time remove the new disks (in the FAS2050
chassis) and boot off the old disks. (This assumes you're keeping the
FAS270 enclosure as a shelf on the new system.) You'll have to go into
maintenance mode to reassign the disks to the new controller(s). Once
it boots normally off the old disks, you can reinsert the new disks,
clobber the factory aggregates and create new ones, or just destroy the
factory root vol. There are other ways to achieve this, but this is one
of the most simple.

When using the resignature options in ESX, you only need to set it to 1
on the first ESX server. Once it resignatures the rest of them will see
that the metadata matches and will mount just fine on rescan. Set it
back to 0 when you're done. However, if you fix the LUN S/Ns from the
filer side, you should not have to resignature. If you do resignature,
you will have to reregister all of your VMs. There's another trick to
fix inaccessible VMs listed at the end of the KB, but you shouldn't need
it.

I hope this helps!

Peter Learmonth


-----Original Message-----
From: Raj Patel [mailto:phigmov [at] gmail]
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 8:59 PM
To: toasters [at] mathworks
Subject: Controller upgrade - ESX LUN re-signaturing

Hi all,

We're planning to upgrade our controller (a 270c to a 2050ha) - my
understanding is the iSCSI LUN's will retain their identity (ie the
existing IQN strings will remain the same) however we will probably
run into the ESX re-signaturing issue.

Is there a way to avoid this as part of the controller upgrade or do I
need to go into each connected ESX host and change the value of
LVM.EnableResignature to 1 ?

Are there any other potential 'gotchas' about an in-place head
replacement ? The process itself looks fairly straightforward if all
the steps are followed through in sequence.

Thanks in advance,
Raj.


phigmov at gmail

Oct 28, 2009, 11:01 PM

Post #3 of 4 (2149 views)
Permalink
Re: Controller upgrade - ESX LUN re-signaturing [In reply to]

Cheers Peter - this looks spot on.

I'll make sure this makes its way into the implementation plan.

Raj.

On 10/29/09, Learmonth, Peter <Peter.Learmonth [at] netapp> wrote:
> Hi Raj
>
> I'd like to refer you to NOW KB33990 (which I wrote). It covers this
> scenario pretty thoroughly.
> https://now.netapp.com/Knowledgebase/solutionarea.asp?id=kb33990
>
> You're mixing two things. LUN identity consists of LUN ID and LUN S/N.
> The IQN is part of the filer identity. In some versions of ONTAP, when
> you swap the NVRAM card (or the whole controller including NVRAM) the
> LUNs may get a new serial number. The IQN should stay the same,
> provided you use the same root volume. If you configure from scratch,
> using the root vol from the factory, for example, you will get a new
> IQN. However, the new IQN is not what triggers VMFS metadata mismatches
> and resignaturing.
>
> The best way to prevent resignaturing is to make sure the LUNs have the
> same S/N before and after. Before you shut down the FAS270, get the
> output of lun show -v, especially the serial numbers. Once you swap
> controllers, before bringing up ESX, make sure the LUNs have the
> original S/N.
>
> To maintain the configuration and identity of the FAS270 when you swap,
> before you boot for the first time remove the new disks (in the FAS2050
> chassis) and boot off the old disks. (This assumes you're keeping the
> FAS270 enclosure as a shelf on the new system.) You'll have to go into
> maintenance mode to reassign the disks to the new controller(s). Once
> it boots normally off the old disks, you can reinsert the new disks,
> clobber the factory aggregates and create new ones, or just destroy the
> factory root vol. There are other ways to achieve this, but this is one
> of the most simple.
>
> When using the resignature options in ESX, you only need to set it to 1
> on the first ESX server. Once it resignatures the rest of them will see
> that the metadata matches and will mount just fine on rescan. Set it
> back to 0 when you're done. However, if you fix the LUN S/Ns from the
> filer side, you should not have to resignature. If you do resignature,
> you will have to reregister all of your VMs. There's another trick to
> fix inaccessible VMs listed at the end of the KB, but you shouldn't need
> it.
>
> I hope this helps!
>
> Peter Learmonth
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Raj Patel [mailto:phigmov [at] gmail]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 8:59 PM
> To: toasters [at] mathworks
> Subject: Controller upgrade - ESX LUN re-signaturing
>
> Hi all,
>
> We're planning to upgrade our controller (a 270c to a 2050ha) - my
> understanding is the iSCSI LUN's will retain their identity (ie the
> existing IQN strings will remain the same) however we will probably
> run into the ESX re-signaturing issue.
>
> Is there a way to avoid this as part of the controller upgrade or do I
> need to go into each connected ESX host and change the value of
> LVM.EnableResignature to 1 ?
>
> Are there any other potential 'gotchas' about an in-place head
> replacement ? The process itself looks fairly straightforward if all
> the steps are followed through in sequence.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Raj.
>


romeotheriault at gmail

Oct 30, 2009, 3:09 AM

Post #4 of 4 (2132 views)
Permalink
Re: Controller upgrade - ESX LUN re-signaturing [In reply to]

I wrote a simple little perl script with automates the process of changing
the serial numbers on the luns back to their pre-head upgrade serials, which
you can find on the now site here:
http://communities.netapp.com/docs/DOC-2369

There is also a vb script one here:
http://communities.netapp.com/docs/DOC-1754

which I basically imitated when making my perl version.

Romeo

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 12:58 PM, Raj Patel <phigmov [at] gmail> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> We're planning to upgrade our controller (a 270c to a 2050ha) - my
> understanding is the iSCSI LUN's will retain their identity (ie the
> existing IQN strings will remain the same) however we will probably
> run into the ESX re-signaturing issue.
>
> Is there a way to avoid this as part of the controller upgrade or do I
> need to go into each connected ESX host and change the value of
> LVM.EnableResignature to 1 ?
>
> Are there any other potential 'gotchas' about an in-place head
> replacement ? The process itself looks fairly straightforward if all
> the steps are followed through in sequence.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Raj.
>



--
Romeo Theriault
System Administrator
Information Technology Services

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