Paths are not getting updated after performing the Powermax SRDF suspend operation with Error: File [datastore#] was not found

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• During SRDF/Metro replication suspend operation, paths to storage are lost and not getting updated with "File not found" error message on vCenter UI.

• After suspend operation you may not be able to a write or perform touch operation on the file on the datastore which is part of the replication.

• Expected paths to be updated or removed as per Storage vendor design may be fulfilled only after performing manual storage rescan at cluster level.

• After suspending the replication, Storage devices may start reporting "Not ready" with sense code "0x2 0x4 0xc" as per storage design. You may observe that the datastores goes into inaccessible state with I/O error under /var/run/log/vmkernel.log

2025-03-19T02:09:41.661Z In(182) vmkernel: cpu54:2098498)ScsiDeviceIO: 4672: Cmd(0x45da3a0c73c0) 0x9e, CmdSN 0x130c0 from world 0 to dev "naa.#############################" failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x2 0x4 0xc

2025-03-19T02:09:41.661Z Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu54:2100430)WARNING: ScsiDeviceIO: 13030: READ CAPACITY on device "naa.############################" from Plugin "NMP" failed. I/O error

 

Sense Key	[0x2]	NOT READY
Additional Sense Data	04/0C	LOGICAL UNIT NOT ACCESSIBLE, TARGET PORT IN UNAVAILABLE STATE

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.x

Cause

This issue is caused due to the Data Protection feature on storage array with the SRDF Group Create Pair Wizard (for SRDF/Metro groups). As devices are getting selected automatically, the new devices are assigned a Device ID Type of "Mobility". Unfortunately, there is currently no way to select a compatibility ID when creating a metro pair using this method and there are no choice provided by the wizard to create the new SRDF/Metro devices as Compatibility devices, when Automatic Selection for the Local and Remote devices is selected. 

Additionally, as per Dell storage vendor the ESXi host only supports the mobility ID for protocol endpoints, which is specific to vVols. Thus, running metro configurations with a mobility ID on ESXi's native multipathing is unsupported unless the customer uses PowerPath. In this case the volumes must be created with a compatibility ID. In most cases, customers will protect existing Devices\TDEVs already in Production, so the wizard will create the target devices and establish the Metro relation using the default device ID type of compatibility.

Resolution

Engage the Dell vendor to further investigate the issue.

As per Dell vendor, Workaround is that if using the Data Protection > SRDF Groups > Create Pair Wizard (for SRDF/Metro groups), use Manual Selection instead of Automatic Selection for Local and Remote volume selection.