Setting LVM.enableResignature =1 remains set after a SRM Test Failover

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

Site Recovery Manager (SRM) does not support ESXi/ESX environments in which the LVM.enableResignature flag is set to 0. During a test failover or an actual failover, SRM automatically sets LVM.enableResignature to 1 if the flag is not already set. SRM sets this flag to resignature snapshot volumes and mounts them on ESX hosts for recovery. After the operation is completed, the flag remains set to 1.

Setting the LVM.enableResignature flag on ESXi/ESX hosts is a host-wide operation. If this flag is set to 1, all snapshot LUNs that are visible to the ESX host and can be resignatured, are resignatured during the host rescan or upon the next host reboot. If you set LVM.enableResignature flag to 1, SRM resignatures all known VMFS snapshot volumes, including any volumes that SRM does not manage. If you leave the flag set to 0, SRM only resignatures the VMFS snapshot volumes that it manages.

If snapshot volumes unrelated to SRM are forcefully mounted to ESXi/ESX hosts on the recovery site, these LUNs are resignatured as part of a host rescan during a test failover or an actual failover process. As a result, all the virtual machines in these volumes become inaccessible.

For further information, see:

• vSphere handling of LUNs detected as snapshot LUNs (1011387).
• Snapshot LUN detection in ESX 3.x and ESX 4.x (1011385).
• Change Storage Provider Settings

Resolution

To prevent outages, ensure that no snapshot LUNs that are unrelated to SRM and that are forcefully mounted are visible to ESXi/ESX hosts on the recovery site.