VSC 7.0 and 7.1 No Storage Information

[Chris_Jones]

For the record: I have also tried all of this with VSC 7.0P1 and still have the same issue.

I was using VSC 6.2.1 but have migrated to SnapCenter 4.0 for the backups and am upgrading to VSC 7.1. I removed VSC 6.2.1 from vCenter and restarted it, the deployed the VSC 7.1 OVA which was successful. The VSC plugin in appears within vSphere Web Client and is the new 7.1 plugin.

When I first look at the Storage Systems section in VSC it lists two systems, which from their IP's are the two NFS LIFs on my ONTAP Cluster (my datastores are mounted via NFS). As soon as I add my ONTAP Cluster (using admin which has full access), the two NFS LIFs disappear from Storage System and are replaced with my cluster, which is discovered.

In VSC 6.2.1, adding the ONTAP Cluster would also detect the SVMs datastores were mounted from. In 7.x the SVMs do not appear. If you dig deeper into the storage system you can view the Summary and see the cluster has been added correctly and the user has full privileges.

When you view the related objects the "Hosts" tab shows my ESXi host, which indicates VSC is aware that host is connected to this storage. The "Interfaces" tab shows all of the LIFs of the cluster.

However, every other tab is empty. No SVMs and no NAS datastores listed.

When I navigate to Hosts & Clusters and select my host and view the NetApp Storage Systems Objects tab, which is provided by the VSC, it also shows nothing.

I have the SnapCenter Plug-In for vSphere also installed and it has my two SVMs connected, backups are running, restores are working. SnapCenter works. But VSC shows nothing.

Back in the VSC Plugin, on the Summary screen it shows no information. The only thing that does seem to work is applying the recommended host settings, however I'm not sure I trust that if it isn't aware of what storage is connected to the hosts.

If I remove VSC 7.x and re-deploy VSC 6.2.1 it works immediately and discovers all storage. I've tried VSC 7.0P1, upgrading this to 7.1 via the ISO, deploying 7.1 fresh. All of them experience the same problem.

I would expect if it was related to my environment then VSC 6.2.1 wouldn't work either. This one is odd.

Anyone experienced this or have any suggestions?

[scortez]

Chris,

    i've seen this before, but not 100% sure sure why it happens.  to get around this in the past i've forced a storage discovery and/or enabling vasa. Doing either or seems to trigger the vsc to start displaying content in the dashboard.  if you have any further question please feel free to reach out to me.

Thanks,

Steven Cortéz

Virtualization Technical Marketing Engineer | Data Fabric & Manageability Group

[Chris_Jones · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your help behind the scenes, Steve, very much appreciated.

So the issue is now resolved, looks like it was an issue with ONTAP vSIM. I have had that one for many months and had performed so many tests with it that it was in a mess.

To summarise what I did, here is what was done:

1. Destroyed my ONTAP 9.3 vSIM

2. Deployed a fresh ONTAP 9.1 vSIM

3. Configured the cluster, created an SVM, presented NFS storage to an ESXi host

4. Deployed VSC 6.2.1 and detected all storage

5. Deployed the VSC 7.1 OVA and registered with vCenter, which removed 6.2.1 from vCenter and replaced with the 7.1 plugin

6. Confirmed VSC 7.1 could see my ONTAP 9.1 storage

7. Upgraded the ONTAP vSIM to ONTAP 9.2

8. Confirmed VSC 7.1 could still see the storage and SVM (between each test I removed the NFS datastores, rescanned VSC storage, removed storage from VSC, mounted the NFS datastores, rescanned VSC storage .... this was to confirm VSC would detect newly connected storage from scratch)

9. Upgrade the ONTAP vSIM to ONTAP 9.3

10. Confirmed VSC 7.1 could still see and scan the storage and SVM

PHEW! I'm so glad that all worked as expected.

There were a few little hiccups, mostly caused by the vSphere Web Client. I had to reboot it once or twice just because it would become unresponsive. But that's almost par for the course with vSphere 6.5 and being forced into using the Web Client.

Thanks again for all your help with this. I really appreciate your efforts to help me with this.