Adding a ParaVirutal SCSI controller

[FatBoy201110141]

Hi All,

I recently went on a VMWare training course and found out about changing my SCSI controllers over to ParaVirtual. The way I was taught to do this would be to add a second ParaVirtual SCSI controller to ID 1:0 to get the driver added to the operating system then shut the system down and switch the main controller (ID 0:0) from LSI Logic SAS to ParaVirtual and then remove the second controller that you added for the driver. I have done this on a couple of servers but most are coming up with the following error when trying to add the ParaVirtual controller:

An error was received from the ESX host while powering on VM %name%.

Failed to start the virtual machine.

Module DevicePowerOn power on failed.

Unable to open the SCSI device '/dev/genscsi/t10.DP______BACKPLANE000000' (scsi1:0): Failed to lock the file.

Does anyone know why this might be? I'm using version 5.1.0

Thanks

Duncan

[FatBoy201110141]

As a second note to this I have tried doing this (adding the second controller when both powered on and off. Also I have successfully added a ParaVirutal controller to the Vcenter server but when I shut the server down and connect directly to the host to change the primary controller to ParaVirtual I get a access denied message saying this VM is managed by the VCenter IP Address and access denied!! How do you get around that??

[marcelo_soares]

About the first issue, what kind of device are you using to add the 1:0 node? A VMDK or an RDM device?

About the second, this should not happen. Are you using an user with admin rights when connecting directly to the ESX (root)?

[FatBoy201110141]

Hi Marcelo,

To add the para virtual device I was just adding SCSI Device selecting SCSI 1:0 and under Connection using SCSI Devcie 'Unknown DP'. Either way last night I did this out of hours for the problem servers after restarts and having the VMs powered down and it worked! Not 100% sure why but looks ok now.

I still have the problem with the VCenter server I was logging into the host locally with its IP address and using the root username and password I thought that should be enough!

[marcelo_soares]

That may be the problem. Try to create an small VMDK instead. But if you already resolved, no problem :smileyhappy:

About the vCenter..... it should not behave like this. Can you try to remove/add the VM from the inventory and then try to change the settings?

[FatBoy201110141]

Thanks Marceol,

Yeah thinking about it on the training they said add I small VMDK on a different SCSI controller not straight SCSI device, either way sorted now. I just connected directly to the host and removed and re-added to the inventory the VCenter VM but still got the same thing as below..

[marcelo_soares]

Aaaaah, you may have this VM inside a Resource Pool at the vCenter level, and this may be limiting resources. Is this the case? You may have also reservations on the pool... some thing like that.

[FatBoy201110141]

It's in a Failover HA cluster consisting of two servers but that's about it, I have no resource pools setup. I don't think its possible to move it out of the HA cluster is it and even if it was would it solve the problem?

Thanks

Duncan

[marcelo_soares]

Just test one thing: disable the admission control at the HA cluster and then test the VC shutdown and change the settings etc.

[FatBoy201110141]

Dam no joy I'm afraid, silly thing is it will let me add a second scsi controller fine and even change the type when powered on via the VCenter, just not change the type from LSI to paravirtual on the primary controller on the boot partition controller when off via the host