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How can I determine if a VMFS volume is on local or SAN-based storage?

Details

When using the VI Client to view 'Configuration > Storage', the VMFS volume listed under 'Identification' has a corresponding entry under 'Device'  but it does not clearly indicate that the path to that device is local or SAN-based storage.
 

Solution

To determine on what type of storage a given VMFS volume resides, note the vmhba specification (e.g. vmhba1:0:3:1) under 'Device'.   

Login to your ESX host and peform the following commands:

# grep vmhba(n) /proc/vmware/pci - Where 'n' is the first number in the vmhba specification (e.g. vmhba1)

If the fourth column from the left reads 'FC, then all LUNs having a 'Device' that begins with vmhba1 are resident on a Fibre Channel controller.  The next column identifies the manufacturer of this controller.   If the fourth column reads 'RAID', then the LUNs resident on that vmhba are resident on a local storage controller.
 
For example:

The VIC client reports:

Identification  Device
storage1        vmhba0:0:0:7
prod              vmhba1:0:3:1
 
# grep vmhba1 /proc/vmware/pci
010:01.0 1077:2312 1077:0100 FC       QLogic    5/ 32/0xd1 A V qla2300_707 vmhba1

# grep vmhba0 /proc/vmware/pci
004:03.0 0e11:0046 0e11:4091 RAID     Compaq    5/ 25/0xc9 A V cciss    vmhba0

From this it can be concluded that 'storage1' is local and that 'prod' is SAN.

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Actions
  • KB Article: 1000376
  • Updated: Aug 14, 2009
  • Products:
    VMware ESX
  • Product Versions:
    VMware ESX 3.0.x