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Removing Cable from One Port on an HBA and Connecting to Another Port on the HBA Causes Both Ports to Fail

Details

After I pull the cable and put back into different port on the same HBA, I expect to see a NO_CONNECT message and a resulting path failover. This does not happen. Instead, both ports fail.

Solution

Given two connected paths:
HBA0_Port0 <------> StorageController0_Port0 and
HBA1_Port1 <------> StorageController1_Port01.

Disconnect the first path and create a new path immediately (HBA0_Port1 <------> StorageController0_Port0).

The expectation is that the system detects the missing connection, the reconnection, and then fails over to the new path.

This does not happen. Instead, after pulling the cable and putting it back into different port on the same HBA, even after waiting for more than 15 minutes, there is no change in HBA status (Active/Standby). No I/O error is generated, but the ports fail.

Possible cause includes:

Removing the cable from HBA0_Port0 should trigger DMD timer. The recommended DMD setting is 30 seconds for Fibre Channel drivers. However, the driver does not receive a NO_CONNECT notification even after waiting more than 140 seconds after cable pull.

Since HBA0_Port0 and HBA0_Port1 are on the same PCI function, it is possible that inserting the cable to HBA0_Port1 immediately turns off the DMD timer. In which case, the driver does not receive the NO_CONNECT notification and PSA does not perform a path failover.

Keywords

ESX, HBA

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KB Article: 1004389
Updated: Aug 14, 2009

Products:
VMware ESX
Product Versions:
VMware ESX 3.5.x

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