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I have created a virtualdisk inside the powervault. I assigned it to a specific host, it's own remote initiator, its own disk group (5tb).

From the client I can discover the initiator but the only volume it can see is a 19mb vol that's supposed to be part of the in-band management.

I've found posts online that suggest that means Im connecting through the wrong controller. I've tried them both and the 5tb volume never appears.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Skeer
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    Happy to help but we need WAAAAY more info - let's see how your storage controllers are setup for a start - are you want this as a datastore or an RDM? – Chopper3 Aug 26 '16 at 17:35
  • Thanks Chopper.. I'd have to say this VD i wanted as a normal ISCSI connection to this specific VM to be used as bulk storage for Veeam backup jobs. (Yes I know Veeam should be physical but I am demoing) Lemme know if this helps: https://postimg.org/gallery/gye5tdla/834b957f/ – Skeer Aug 26 '16 at 20:39
  • Ahhh - so you're bypassing ESXi entirely and just mounting it directly INSIDE the VM right? If so then I'm even more confused, if you can discover the initiator then that's usually all you need to do. – Chopper3 Aug 27 '16 at 10:12

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Based on the comments below your question, it sounds like you're trying to connect from your Veeam virtual machine directly to the MD3220i virtual disk with iSCSI (not managing the iSCSI connections from the ESX host).

If your Veeam host is running Windows and is using the built-in Microsoft MPIO (or doesn't have MPIO installed at all) that may explain why you would see the 19-20MB LUN(s).

Any hosts connecting directly via iSCSI - whether physical or virtual - will need an installation of Modular Disk Storage Manager run from the resource DVD. You can run this as a host-only install to skip the management software installation and only put MPIO in place, but the management software and MPIO drivers are all packaged on a single DVD.

If you no longer see the "access" LUNs (19-20MB) listed after installing the MPIO drivers (which is good) but still don't see your 5TB backup volume, you may need to revisit your host mapping configuration for the volume - it can be a little confusing the first few times you attempt it, but the listing for your host should show it has the Access LUN and your 5TB LUN both mapped to it (they'd be on the same list, one above the other when your host is selected).

Latest resource dvd: http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER03887874M/1/DELL_MDSS_Consolidated_RDVD_6_4_0_5.iso

User guide (see p56 for host mapping info): ftp://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/common/md32xx_md36xx_administrator%20guide_en%20us.pdf

JimNim
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  • Thanks JimNim.. stupid me had forgotten about the Dell tools needing to be installed. I got that taken care of an now I dont see the Access lun anymore but neither do I see the data lun. Im going through and recreating it from scratch, but am I going about this all wrong? Should I be attaching this lun to the hypervisor then like creating another virtual disk for use by the guest? – Skeer Aug 29 '16 at 14:09
  • Which configuration does the software vendor (Veeam) recommend? If you don't have a need or business case for iSCSI direct, I wouldn't default to it - allowing ESX to manage the iSCSI connections typically turns out to be much easier when you get multiple VMs and hosts involved, and the performance differences would be negligible with a backup workload. – JimNim Aug 29 '16 at 14:48
  • Actually I have no clue.. from what I've read it seems that most Veeam installs are physical. So far the tests have been positive on this vm guest however. And actually this will be the only guest accessing this particular lun. – Skeer Aug 30 '16 at 12:47