vSAN Objects invalid

After a failed firmware update on my Intel x722 NICs one host came up without its 10 Gbit kernelports (vSAN Network). Every effort of recovery failed and I had to send in my “bricked” host to Supermicro. Normally this shouldn’t be a big issue in a 4-node cluster. But the fact that management interfaces were up and vSAN interfaces were not must have caused some “disturbance” on the cluster and all my VM objects were marked as “invalid” on the 3 remaining hosts.

I was busy on projects so I didn’t have much lab-time anyway, so I waited for the repair of the 4th host. Last week it finally arrived and I instantly assembled boot media, cache and capacity disks. I checked MAC addresses and settings on the repaired host and everything looked good. But after booting the reunited cluster still all objects were marked invalid.

Time for troubleshooting

First I opened SSH shells to each host. There’s a quick powerCLI one-liner to enable SSH throughout the cluster. Too bad I didn’t have a functional vCenter at that time, so I had to activate SSH on each host with the host client.

From the shell of the repaired host I’ve checked the vSAN-Network connection to all other vSAN kernel ports . The command below pings from interface vmk1 (vSAN) to IP 10.0.100.11 (vSAN kernel port of esx01 for example)

vmkping -I vmk1 10.0.100.11

I received ping responses from all hosts on all vSAN kernel ports. So I could conclude there’s no connection issue in the vSAN-network.

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Pockethernet hands on

The Swiss Army knife of network troubleshooting

Have you ever been in a situation where you had to follow a network cable through a mesh (or should I say mess?) of hundreds of other cables, just to find out which switchport it is connected to? If your answer is no, please tell me your secret! 🙂

Cool tool

Last week I got a packet with a handy new tool inside. It’s called Pockethernet. Once started as a crowdfunding project, it is now a mature, full featured network analyzer that easily fits into one hand or the pocket of your shirt.

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