VMFS recognized as a snapshot what to do? Exploring the next version of ESX…

Your VMFS has been recognized as a snapshot, what are you going to do? Hopefully most of you have read my previous post on this topic by now. If you didn’t, be very ashamed and start reading my EnableResignature post before you continue.

I was just playing with a VMworld Europe lab manual, which was about the next version of ESX/vCenter(Part of vSphere). I noticed the following new command on the command-line: esxcfg-volume. I did a help and the following showed up:

-l | --list
-m | --mount <vmfs uuid|label>
-u | -- umount <vmfs uuid|label>
-r | -- resignature <vmfs uuid|label>
-M | --persistent-mount <vmfs uuid|label>

As you can imagine this command will come in handy when a VMFS/LUN is being recognized as a clone or snapshot! With version 3.5 you needed to change an advanced setting. This setting wasn’t specifically for just one LUN, but for all of them, which is a risk. With the next version of ESX you could do the following if a volume has been detected as a snapshot and you want to resignature it:

1. esxcfg-volume -l

2. esxcfg-volume -r 49ba276a-c9e135b6-26f8-000c29123ede

Or if the current cloned volume isn’t connected you could also just mount it:

1. esxcfg-volume -l

2. esxcfg-volume -m 49ba276a-c9e135b6-26f8-000c29123ede

And if you are absolutely sure the cloned volume will not return you could mount it persistantly, which is the equivallent of “EnableResignature=0, DisallowSnapshotLUN=0”:

1. esxcfg-volume -l

2. esxcfg-volume -M 49ba276a-c9e135b6-26f8-000c29123ede

Don’t you just love this new exciting command-line magic! There’s more to come over the next days/weeks.

btw: there’s also a way of doing this from the GUI… Just add a new LUN, select the LUN that you want to mount, depending on what needs to be done pick “Assign a new signature” or “Keep Existing Signature”. But where’s the fun in that?