Unable to boot esxi 6 with DiskLun error

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Torbjørn Sandvik

New Member
Jun 10, 2015
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I'm running an esxi 6 host on my Dell poweredge 2950 G2 with perc5i raid controller. Running 4 2TB WD disks in raid5 (storage) and one singel disk as system disk and VM.

It's been running for several years with esxi 4-5-6 with no problems.

No suddenly I'm not able to boot up the system.

The boot stops on "nfs4client loaded successfully"

If i then his F1 I get a list of errors I dont realy understand:
StorageInfolmpl: Discovery failed (Retrying)

Not all luns may be visible

StorageInfo: Unabke to name LUN mpx.vmhba32:C0:TO:LO. Cannon set display name on this device. Unable to guarantee name will not change across reboots or media change.

nfsgssd started

DiskLun: No partition: 8 found on lun: t10.ATA_____WDC_WD1003FBYX2D011Y7B1________WD2DWCAW34452313 jumpstart: bora/lib/vmkctl/system/SystemInfolmpl.cpp:1508: virtual void VmkCtl::System::SystemInfoImpl::SetupSymlinks(bool, bool): Assertion 'altbootbank.get()' failed.

Aborted
If I hit F12 I get:
ScsiDevice10: 2646: Cmd(0x439d803e25c0) 0x1a, CmdSN 0x324 from world 0 to dev "naa.600188b0364ae50018832d1302be5441" failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x20 0x0.



NMP: nmp_TrottleLogForDevice:3178: Cmd 0x1a (0x439d803f4bc0, 0) to dev "mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0" on path "vmhba32:C0:T0:L0" Failed : H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x24 0x0. Act: NONE

NMP: nmp_TrottleLogForDevice:3178: Cmd 0x1a (0x439d803f4bc0, 0) to dev "naa.600188b0364ae50018832d1302be5441" on path "vmhba1 : C2:T1:L0" Failed: H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valis sense data: 0x5 0x20 0x0, Act: NONE

WARNING: Term: 1566: Unknown ANSI sequence <ESC>15:0- (1)
Is there any hope to get this up and running ?

If not, is there a way to extract some of the data without sending the disk to a spesial company.. ?
 

pricklypunter

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Nov 10, 2015
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If you remove the VM disk and place it in another machine, can you access it? If so, maybe boot ESXi from a USB stick and access your datastore and back-up your VM's, at least that way you can always replace the disk if you need to with a clean copy of ESXi :)
 

Torbjørn Sandvik

New Member
Jun 10, 2015
24
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I did install esxi on a usb stick. I can now boot it.
Under "storage -> datastore" I only see my raid5 (4x2TB)
If I hit "Devices" I can see my VM disk. But how can I access my files on it ?
 

pricklypunter

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Nov 10, 2015
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Before doing anything else, get your datastore disk out the server and use dd on another machine to make a 1:1 image/ copy of it, just in case things don't pan out as you expect. That way, should it all go wrong, you can get back to where you started from to try another approach, without any further loss of data.

I would imagine if you can see it listed as a device in the vshpere client, you should be able to mount it and add it back in as a datastore. You can do that from the storage option in the configuration tab of the vsphere client. Click on add storage and select the "keep existing signature" option. It can be done from the cli too, if you prefer, but I would need to look up the appropriate commands. Once you get the lun mounted, create some space on your management computer (the one you're running the vshpere client on) and use the datastore browser to download a copy of all your VM's over your local LAN. This may take a little time depending on how large your virtual disks are and it can only be done when the VM's are not running. Once you have at least a backup copy of your VM's, then you can pull your datastore disk out the server and clean/ test it for badblocks/ other anomalies on another machine. If none are found, you can put the disk back in your server, create a new datastore, copy back your VM's and add them back to your inventory again. Whatever else you do, don't skip using dd to image the disk on another machine before doing anything :)
 

pricklypunter

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Nov 10, 2015
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no, you'll need everything except the log files, but those may hold some clues as to what went wrong, and they are small, so just grab them too :)