BCS RSSM : Storage path may be disconnected in VMware ESXi 5 - IBM BladeCenter

Resolving The Problem

Source

RETAIN tip: H21976

Symptom

A disconnected storage path is observed under the following environment, and will not recover when the Operating System (OS) performs multipath failover:

• HS23 or HS23E blades installed in BladeCenter S chassis.
• VMware ESXi 5.0 U2 or ESXi 5.1 U1 or ESXi 5.5 U1.
• VMware installed on RAIDed Shared Storage Module (RSSM) environment with multipath enabled.

Affected configurations

The system may be any of the following IBM servers:

• BladeCenter HS23, type 1929, any model
• BladeCenter HS23, type 7875, any model
• BladeCenter HS23E, type 8038, any model
• BladeCenter HS23E, type 8039, any model
• BladeCenter S, type 1948, any model
• BladeCenter S, type 7779, any model
• BladeCenter S, type 8886, any model

The system is configured with at least one of the following:

• VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.0 with IBM Customization Installable, Update 2
• VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1 with IBM Customization Installable, Update 1
• VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.5 with IBM Customization Installable, any model, any Update

The system is configured with one or more of the following IBM Options:

• IBM BladeCenter S SAS RAID Controller Module, Option part number 43W3584, any replacement part number (CRU)
  

Note: This does not imply that the network operating system will work under all combinations of hardware and software.

Please see the compatibility page for more information:

• http://www.ibm.com/systems/info/x86servers/serverproven/compat/us/

Solution

This is a permanent restriction, there will be no solution.

Workaround

User can work around this issue by disabling LSI Common Information Model (CIM) provider. There are two (2) methods detailed in the steps as below:

[Method 1]

1. Switch to ESXi shell by pressing Alt + F1 and login to the OS.

2. Disable LSI CIM provider by entering the following command:

esxcli system settings advanced set -o /UserVars/CIMvmw_lsiproviderProviderEnabled -i 0

3. Restart the service using the following command:

[Method 2]

1. Install VMware vSphere Client and login to the OS.

2. Click on 'Configuration' tab.

3. On the left side, click on 'Advanced Settings'.

4. Click on 'UserVars' on the left side of the opened dialog box.

5. On the right pane, find the 'UserVars.CIMvmw_lsiproviderProviderEnabled' field.

6. Disable it by keying in 0.

7. Restart the system to take effect.