Hitachi - Unable to see Fibre Storage on ESXi host

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Affected Fibre Channel: Hitachi

Unable to see Fibre Channel LUN being presented from Hitachi array.
The same LUN presented to a physical Windows machine, could be detected by the Windows.

No errors reported in host logs. 
Several different Fibre Channel Controller Driver and Firmware versions were tried without success

 

/var/log/boot.gz is showing that the affected Host can login to the array target port:
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.ZZ cpu26:2097751)qlnativefc: (12:0.0): qlnativefcAsyncLogin:6230: Async-login - ##:##:##:##:##:##:##:## hdl=10, loopid=1 portid=###### retries=8.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.ZZ cpu15:2097940)qlnativefc: (12:0.0): qlnativefcLogioEntry:2381: Async-login complete - ##:##:##:##:##:##:##:##  hdl=10 portid=###### iop0=12.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.ZZ cpu26:2097751)qlnativefc: (12:0.0): qlnativefcUpdateFcport:3014: WWPN ##:##:##:##:##:##:##:##, targetId 0, port Id ######:1 ONLINE

 

 

Environment

vSphere ESXi (All Versions)

Cause

• Hitachi Arrays has a feature to configure LUN mapping based on the operating system.
• If the host mode is configured with anything other than VMware/VMware EX, the LUN will not be visible to ESXi hosts.
• To view the current 'host mode' for a LUN, check the LUN settings on Hitachi Ops Center Administrator UI.
• This feature is introduced by Hitachi to potentially avoid a LUN being over written by another operating system.
• For more details on Host modes and host mode options contact Hitachi Support.

 

Resolution

Map the LUN from Hitachi array using host mode set to either VMware Ex or VMware.