External USB devices showing as Storage Adapters on Dell hardware using iDRAC

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Devices that cannot be used as datastores for virtual machines are appearing under Storage Adapters.
• From an SSH session, running the command esxcfg-scsidevs -l produces output similar to:

Local USB CD-ROM (Virtual CDROM)

Local USB Direct-Access (Virtual Floppy)

Local USB Direct-Access (MAS001)

Local USB Direct-Access (SECUPD)

• The vSphere Client shows multiple devices in addition to the standard devices used as storage (such as the local hard disk or SAN storage). For example:

vmhba32:C0:T0:L0, vmhba33:C0:T0:L0, vmhba35:C0:T0:L0, vmhba36:C0:T0:L0,vmhba37:C0:T0:L0,

vmhba40:C0:T0:L0, vmhba41:C0:T0:L0, vmhba42:C0:T0:L0, vmhba43:C0:T0:L0,vmhba44:C0:T0:L0,

vmhba45:C0:T0:L0, vmhba46:C0:T0:L0, vmhba47:C0:T0:L0, vmhba48:C0:T0:L0,vmhba49:C0:T0:L0

Environment

VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESX 4.1.x

Cause

This issue occurs if you have external USB devices and the iDRAC is set to mount these devices as virtual media.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you must set the iDRAC Virtual Media option to Detached:

1. Reboot the ESX host. Make sure to power down or VMotion any needed virtual machines.
2. Upon reboot, wait for the Dell iDRAC message, then get into Setup by pressing Ctrl+E.
3. Look for an option for Virtual Media, and set it to Detached.
   
   Note: If there there is no Virtual Media found then continue to step 6.
   
   
4. Save the settings and continue to boot the ESX host normally.
5. When the host has completely rebooted, login as root.
6. Execute the following commands:

# cd /opt/dell/srvadmin/cm/invcol

# mv invcol invcol.bak

# srvadmin-services.sh restart

Notes:

• If this procedure does not resolve the issue, try disabling the USB controller and devices from the server BIOS.
• In later versions of the Dell manager, invcol may also be located at /opt/dell/srvadmin/sbin.