I found the below forum that explains by unbinding the lowest VMK port via ESXi GUI under network section. Well how do you setup a storage heartbeat on the lowest VMK port without having to delete the existing VMK ports that are serving iSCSI connections (LIVE!) This Technical Report will guide the user through establishing a Storage Heartbeat during the vSwitch configuration. It is always recommended to separate iSCSI traffic and standard management traffic and this Storage Heartbeat should not be on the same subnet as the ESXi management traffic.
This heartbeat has to be the lowest VMkernel port on the vSwitch and is not bound to the software initiator. It is simply used as the lowest vmkernel port for vmkping and other iSCSI network functions. When properly configured this heartbeat sits outside of the iSCSI software initiator and does not consume any additional iSCSI storage connections. To prevent this from occurring, Dell recommends that a highly available vmkernel port be created on the iSCSI subnet serving as the default vmkernel port for such outgoing traffic. In some scenarios, depending upon array, server and network load, logins may not be completed in a timely manner.
Although iSCSI traffic isn’t directly affected by this condition, a side effect of the suppressed ping replies is that the EqualLogic PS Series group will not be able to accurately determine connectivity during the login process, and therefore a suboptimal placement of iSCSI sessions will occur.
This includes vMotion traffic, SSH access, and ICMP ping replies. As a result, if the physical NIC that is being used as the uplink for the default vmkernel port goes down, network traffic that is using the default vmkernel port will fail. The iSCSI multipathing network configuration requires that the iSCSI vmkernel ports use a single physical NIC as an uplink. In the VMware virtual networking model, certain types of vmkernel network traffic are sent out on a default vmkernel port for each subnet. In the Technical Report they mention about VMKernel Storage Heartbeat. Following on they put me in the direction off a Technical Report (TR1075) written by DELL for “Configuring iSCSI connectivity with VMware vSphere 5 and DELL Equallogic PS Series Storage” After reviewing they noticed a lot of dropped frames and suggested it was pointing at our switch stack layer. Following best practice I opened a case with DELL directly to ask them to review our diagnostics logs along with them from SAN HQ’s. Type “DeleteAllMyDataNow” and press enterĪfter confirming that you want to reset the array, all network connections are closed.Decided to review our SAN infrastructure and connectivity to our VMware vSphere 5.0 environment due to some latency issues recently.(You cannot remove the last member of a group.) If the array is the only remaining member of a group, run the reset command. The array will not be able to connect to a group until you add it to the group. This will move any volume data residing on the array to the remaining group members if possible.Ĭaution: This command eliminates ALL group, member, and volume configuration information and volume data on the array. If an array is a member of a multi-member group, it is highly recommended that you remove the member from the group, which automatically runs the reset command. The array will ask you to confirm with “Y” or “N”.This will take you to the tech-support commands which are restricted to Tech Support personnel. To completely wipe all data with no chance of restoring it: Please do not run any other commands while in the tech support bash as you may permanently damage your array, according to Dell Support.Ĭaution: Once this command is run, ALL former meta-data on the disks will be completely overwritten! Normally the Tech-Support commands are not allowed for customers to run, but we will make an exception and hope Dell Support will not come after me for revealing this. It does not take that much to do, frighteningly enough, but it will take quite a few hours to finish, so find a big pot of coffee or something else to do in the meantime.
To do a total wipe and factory reset of a EqualLogic SAN there is a simple two-step process to follow.
No matter the reason, if it is a EqualLogic SAN there is no built-in way of doing it for the users – and then again…! Sometimes you will need to do a wipe of a storage solution, maybe you’re selling it, just taking it down and do not have any plans for it or something third.