Clustered VMDK datastore LUN support check

Products

• VMware vSphere ESX 7.x
• VMware vSphere ESX 8.x

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• The "Clustered VMDK support" option does not appear in the vCenter Server when navigating to Datastore > Configure > General.
  
  
  
  
• Due to this missing option, it is not possible to enable clustered VMDK support.

Environment

8.x

Cause

To support clustered VMDK datastores, LUNs must:

• Support SCSI-3 reservation type WEAR (i.e., Write Exclusive All Registrant)
• Support ATS commands
• Have 512/512e sector size disks

Cause Validation: 

• Login to ESXi host via SSH using administrator credentials.
• Run the below mentioned command.
  
  vsish -e get /storage/scsifw/devices/eui.################################/info
  
  

  Sample output:

  vsish -e get /storage/scsifw/devices/eui.################################/info

  Device information {
owning plugin :NMP
state : 0 -> on
APD reason : 1 -> none
device type : 0 -> Direct-Access
partition table type : 0 -> unknown
vendor :EMC
model :ScaleIO
revision :4.0
capacity:info {
logical block size :512
num of logical blocks :134217728
physical block size :512
first aligned LBA over PBA :0
}
Device Format: 1 -> 512n
Max Transfer Number of blocks:16777216
SCSI version:0x06
DevFS registration type: 1 -> Disk devfs registration
is pseudo-device?:0
is device reserved?:0
is device removable?:0
is device local?:0
is device SSD?:0
is device NVME?:0
is LUN queue depth being throttled?:0
is Protocol Endpoint?:0
is Emulated DIF/DIX Enabled?:0
format progress %:4294967295
format result: 0 -> unknown
Thin provisioning status: 2 -> unknown
device availability: 2 -> degraded availability
# pending reservations:0
current open count:0
current schedQ count:2
VAAI clone status: 2 -> unsupported
VAAI zero status: 1 -> supported
VAAI delete status: 2 -> unsupported
VAAI ATS status: 1                    
PI:Protection info {
Is protection enabled on this device:0
Is PI supported by the device:0
Is PI activated for the device:0
Protection Type:0
Protection Mask:0x00000000
Supported Guard: 0 -> NO GUARD SUPPORT
Is DIX Enabled:0
DIX Guard: 0 -> NO GUARD SUPPORT
}
vsi SNRO:32
Ignore inquiry Cache?:0
pci vendor id:0
pci sub vendor id:0
is WEAR reservation supported?:0
VMFS header offset:0
}

   

  Note for VAAI ATS status and is WEAR reservation supported?, a value of 1 => supported, value of 0 => unsupported

 

 

 

Resolution

Engage Storage vendor. 

Additional Information

Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) with shared disks on VMware vSphere 7.x: Guidelines for supported configurations.