VMWare Only one FreeNAS Allowed

[Dataforge Canada]

Hi Guys,

I have 2x brand new FreeNAS boxes on my storage LAN. Unfortunately I can only have one of them in VMWare at a time.

After a few hours of working, it seems that changing the serial number of the extent allowed both devices to be seen by VMWare and the disks are mounted. Is this known? Can someone explain the concept here just so I understand? Thanks!

 

[Dataforge Canada]

Hi Guys,

I have 2x brand new FreeNAS boxes on my storage LAN. Unfortunately I can only have one of them in VMWare at a time.

After a few hours of working, it seems that changing the serial number of the extent allowed both devices to be seen by VMWare and the disks are mounted. Is this known? Can someone explain the concept here just so I understand? Thanks!

SOLVED

Yes, I can confirm. Changing the serial number to a unique key on each storage unit works fine. I understand, this is what VMWare uses as the ID.

 

[jgreco]

Yes. VMware expects that there can be multiple paths to storage devices, and tries to be very careful not to trample your data or create situations where things can go awry. Keeping track of various identifiers is a key part of the strategy to keep things sane.

 

[Dataforge Canada]

Yes. VMware expects that there can be multiple paths to storage devices, and tries to be very careful not to trample your data or create situations where things can go awry. Keeping track of various identifiers is a key part of the strategy to keep things sane.

Quick question, still having some issues. Both arrays came up as "snapshot VMDK". Under FreeNAS does the LUN # have to be unique for each array? That seemed to solve my issue and a re-key, which was painfull.