Duplicate storage iqns seen on the ESXi hosts

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptom:

• Multiple hosts in the environment are reporting 4 paths, however the iqns listed on the devices are duplicates, and in total we have 2 paths.
  
  Example: iqns are ending with only two different IPs i.e 192.##.3.100 and 192.##.4.100.
  
  
  Port binding is configured on the host.
  
  
  
• From the Pure storage interface, we are unable to see all the ports connected to the host.
  
  

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

• Array Target iSCSI ports are in a different broadcast domain and IP subnet.
  
  
• VMkernel ports used for iSCSI connectivity exist in a different broadcast domain, IP subnet and/or vSwitch.
  
  Note: Port binding is not supposed to be configured in these kind of environment.
  
  

Resolution

• Edit the iSCSI configuration on your host to remove a port binding.
  • Click Storage in the VMware Host Client inventory, click Adapters, and click Configure iSCSI.
  • In the Network port bindings section, select a VMkernel NIC from the list.
  • Click Remove port binding.
  • Click Save configuration.

Example:

• Post removing the Network port bindings configurations, we see below changes on the host after a storage rescan.
  
  Example: iqns are ending with four different IPs i.e 192.##.3.100, 192.##.3.101, 192.##.4.100 and 192.##.4.101
  
  
  On the Pure Storage UI as well, we see that the connectivity to all the ports becomes active. 
  :
  

Additional Information

Considerations for using software iSCSI port binding in ESXi