vVol creation error for .vSphere-HA protected folder

[Geogee007]

Hello,

is anybody else facing with error when starting up a VM on the vVol datastore? I have an error failing to create .vSphere-HA folder for HA protected machine list.

From VASA provider log the message as follows:

Caused by: com.netapp.offtap3.ontap.ApiFailedException: Invalid VM name: _vSphere_HA. VM names must be between 1 and 254 characters in length. The first letter must be one of A-Z or a-z. The remaining characters must be A-Z, a-z, 0-9, space or valid ASCII punctuation. (errno=13001)

Does anybody knows how to solve that, or is there a "secret" patch for this issue?

The .vSphere-HA folder is created automatically by vSphere and it is not the VM!

AFF A300 (9.4P5), VSC 7.2.1P1

Thanks for response 

[konnerth]

Hi,

I am sorry you are seeing this problem.  I suggest you open a Support case on this.

---Karl

[Geogee007]

Any news about this issue? I have found, that there is KB article from June with linking to Bug 1212933, but I have been creating SR in March and till that time NetApp was not able to solve this issue?? How long it will take?

[konnerth]

Hi George,

We have identified changes in ONTAP and the virtual appliance (VASA Provider) to address this.  The ONTAP changes are targeted to 9.6P1 and 9.5P8.  The virtual appliance changes are in the 9.6 release, targeted for August release.  Both are undergoing QA testing, so these may change.  I hope this helps.

---Karl

[Geogee007]

I have updated to the latest NetApp release of 9.5, which is 9.5P7 (August) and it doesn't solve the problem. Do you have any info about the 9.5P8 release date, which you have mentioned previously?

In the release notes of 9.6P1 or 9.6P2 isn't also any info about this problem to be solved. And in the release bug report is nothing about releases, that should solve this issue.

https://mysupport.netapp.com//NOW/cgi-bin/bol?Type=Detail;Display=1212933

[Geogee007]

So Ontap update 9.5P8 was released on 1st October, it looks, that it should solve this issue, because it is mentioned in the Bug list. But only for 9.5 branch, not for the 9.6 branch.

[Blissitt]

I tried 9.6P3 and as you guessed, it has not been fixed there yet.  I then downgraded my test environment to 9.5P8.

It does look like 9.5P8 improves the .vSphere-HA behavior when you enable HA.  I've created both NFS and iSCSI-based vVols and I'm now cloning some VMs to them with HA enabled.  For the iSCSI vVols I was able to see .vmdk files appear in OnCommand's LUNs pane as expected.  I am getting an "Object type storage alarm" in the Datastores navigation pane, but that could be due to Protocol Endpoint issues with my test environment and/or the downgrade.

[konnerth]

I have seen vCenter raise object type storage alarms, and sometimes they go away.  In one case I restarted vvold on a host and that cleared it.  In two cases I think it was related to PE LUNs.

[Blissitt]

Thank you, it was just one of my two test hosts that was throwing the errors, so your vvold solution may have helped.  What I ended up doing was deleting all vVols, disabling VASA in the VSC, re-enabling it, then recreating the vVols.  I'm not getting any errors now, and I would say that 9.5P8 has been solid as far as vVols go.  I won't upgrade my test environment to 9.6Px until the release notes say that vVols have been fixed in that version.

[Blissitt]

Looks like 9.6P4 dropped today.  "Bugs fixed in 9.6P4" includes:

"VVol datastore displays "vSphere HA failed to create a configuration VVol for this datastore" alarm with ONTAP 9.4 or later."

Note: Download link still says "Download Latest Release [9.6P3]" but 9.6P4 is available in the pull-down.  I haven't upgraded yet as 9.5P8 is still working very well for me.