ESXi 6 Update 2, PDL errors on VVOL PE device
I was upgrading a customer to vSphere 6.0 Update 2, The vCenter went fine.
but when i came to upgrade the ESXi hosts they hags when it comes to the massage "About to install" at the Console
When looking at the logger screen "ALT+F12" it looks like this:
And in the vmkernel.log there was a lot of this:
2016-05-03T11:21:05.277Z cpu6:33386)WARNING: NMP: nmp_PathDetermineFailure:2973: Cmd (0x28) PDL error (0x5/0x25/0x0) - path vmhba2:C0:T2:L256 device naa.2ff78002ac0052de - triggering path failover 2016-05-03T11:21:05.277Z cpu6:33386)WARNING: NMP: nmpCompleteRetryForPath:382: Logical device "naa.2ff78002ac0052de": awaiting fast path state update before retrying failed command again... 2016-05-03T11:21:06.277Z cpu9:57333)WARNING: NMP: nmpDeviceAttemptFailover:603: Retry world failover device "naa.2ff78002ac0052de" - issuing command 0x43a5cc84e400 2016-05-03T11:21:06.277Z cpu6:33386)WARNING: NMP: nmpCompleteRetryForPath:352: Retry cmd 0x28 (0x43a5cc84e400) to dev "naa.2ff78002ac0052de" failed on path "vmhba2:C0:T3:L256" H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x25 0x0.
The vmhba2:C0:T2:L256 is the Virtual Volume PE LUN ID 256).
After some searching i found this Community thread: https://communities.vmware.com/thread/533806?start=0&tstart=0
And this Blog post: http://vsphere-land.com/news/max-luns-increased-to-1024-in-vsphere-6.html
The solution was to change the advanced setting Disk.MaxLun to 255 before starting the upgrade.
The customer was using HPE 3PAR storage.
UPDATE:
There is a patch from HP to 3PAR that solves this named: "HPE 3PAR OS 3.2.2 MU2 P24" or "HPE 3PAR OS 3.2.1 P37", remember to check if this patch applies to your HPE 3PAR.
From the release notes:
Addresses an issue in which some VMware versions may send unsupported commands to the PE LUN (LUN 256). Such commands are currently returned with sense data 0x5 0x25 0x0. This response causes VMware to encounter an unexpected PDL alert on the LUN. The response is now changed to 0x5 0x20 0x0 to avoid this issue.
Hi Allan, Imusing HPE 3PAR as a VVOL in my ESXi 6 Update 1 hosts. Recently I refreshed VASA provider certificate and some of the hosts are stopped responding to PE. I don't see PE in host properties. Now I'm confused. If I unmont a datastore from the host and rescan the HBA adapters the result is not success. How can I fix this issue ?
I have update the article with information about a patch that should solve the problem, from HPE.
Hope it also solves your problem.
Hi Allan,
This issue also prohibits Stateful Installs using Auto Deploy and Host Profiles. So you might want to add that to your KB.
The Error you get in /var/log/hostprofiletrace.log is that ” /uservars/PXEBootEnabled” does not exist, so it is not easy to trace to this vvols issue.