esxcfg-scsidevs, Exploring the next version of ESX!

Whenever I do a beta test of a product / OS the first thing I do is check if all the features / commands that I used with the previous version still exist. When I did an “esxcfg- tab tab” on the next version of ESX one thing stood out, esxcfg-vmhbadevs was gone. I use this command a lot when investigating SAN problems, same goes for esxcfg-mpath by the way. Both print really valuable information that I usually copy & paste for keeping track of changes.

With the upcoming version of ESX(vSphere) a new command will be introduced which replaces esxcfg-vmhbadevs: esxcfg-scsidevs.

This new command has a couple of extra command line options and prints more detail than ever before, of which -l is probably the most useful. Using “esxcfg-scsidevs -l” results in:

mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0
   Device Type: Direct-Access
   Size: 6144 MB
   Display Name: Local VMware, Disk (mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0)
   Plugin: NMP
   Console Device: /dev/sda
   Devfs Path: /vmfs/devices/disks/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0
   Vendor: VMware,   Model: VMware Virtual S  Revis: 1.0
   SCSI Level: 2  Is Pseudo: false Status: on
   Is RDM Capable: false Is Removable: false
   Is Local: true
   Other Names:
      vml.0000000000766d686261323a303a30

One of the options I used the most with esxcfg-vmhbadevs was “-m”, which would result in the following:

vmhba0:0:0:5 /dev/sdb5 49b785f3-f263cec4-a4bd-000c29123ede

For esxcfg-scsidevs the option -m also displays this information, but VMware has added the VMFS name which makes it clear what the relationship is and saves me the extra step of matching ID’s with names manually:

mpx.vmhba0:C0:T0:L0:5 /dev/sdb5
  49b785f3-f263cec4-a4bd-000c29123ede  0  Storage1

So far I’m happy with the improvements in the service console / remote cli! Up next: iSCSI.

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/03/16/esxcfg-scsidevs-exploring-the-next-version-of-esx/