I'm having issues attempting to bring an existing VMware 3.5 LUN (on a clariion CX700) into SVC as an image mode vdisk. VMware is simply not recognizing that the vmfs is usable when it is going through the SVC as image mode - and the only option I have would be to re-format the storage with a new vmfs (wiping out all the virtual machine data on the volume in the process if I did).
So - what is the proper set of steps/procedures to bring and existing vmfs volume into SVC control as an image mode vdisk?
A question: You "created" an vdisk with "svctask mkvdisk ... -vtype image ..." mapped it to an host and it did not work? normaly there should be no problem. I did it several times for different OS's an I never had a problem. If possible call the IBM support. The Clarions are supported with the SVC so they must help you.
On thing you might want to check is the LUNs that you are using.
When the volumes is mapped directly to the host, it will be mapped with a specific LU number.
Once SVC is in place, it would be prudent to map any Image Mode VDisks back to the host with the same LU number that the underlying MDisk was originally mapped to the host with.
I'm not saying it's a requirement, but I have vague recollections of this being an issue some years back (>2) when I worked in SVC Support.
In particular, LUN 0 has special meaning for some servers.
Yep - I did simply bring in the LUN under SVC control and create an image mode vDisk from that mdisk. We tried it with defaulting the LUN ID, as well as specifying the same LUN ID as it was on the ESX nodes before. Both methods fail in a sense that VMware recognizes that it is a vmfs volume, but it does not allow us to use it - only gives us the option to format it anew.
This is a proof of concept installation with loaner equipment (SVC 4.3.x), so I'm working with our IBM reps to determine how to achieve IBM support in this scenario.
If anyone knows of other things to try, please chime in. Thanks!
