Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

host profiles

Another way to fix your non compliant host profile

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I found out there is another way to fix your non compliant host profile problems with vSphere 6.0 when you have SAS drives which are detected as shared storage while they are not. This method is a bit more complicated though and there is a command line script that you will need to use: /bin/sharedStorageHostProfile.sh. It works as follows:

  • Run the following to dump all your local details in a folder on your first host 
    /bin/sharedStorageHostProfile.sh local /folder/youcreated1/
  • Run the following to dump all your local details in a folder for your second host, you can do this on your first host if you have SSH enabled 
    /bin/sharedStorageHostProfile.sh remote /folder/youcreated2/ <name or ip of remote host>
  • Copy the outcome of the second host to folder where the outcome of your first host is stored. You will need to copy the file “remote-shared-profile.txt”.
  • Now you can compare the outcomes by running: 
    /bin/sharedStorageHostProfile.sh compare /folder/youcreated1/
  • After comparing you can run the configuration as follows: 
    /bin/sharedStorageHostProfile.sh configure /folder/youcreated1/
  • Now the disks which are listed as cluster wide resources but are not shared between the hosts will be configured as non-shared resources. If you want to check what will be changed before running the command you can simply do a “more” of the file the info is stored in: 
    more esxcli-sharing-reconfiguration-commands.txt
    esxcli storage core device setconfig -d naa.600508b1001c2ee9a6446e708105054b --shared-clusterwide=false
    esxcli storage core device setconfig -d naa.600508b1001c3ea7838c0436dbe6d7a2 --shared-clusterwide=false

You may wonder by now if there isn’t an easier way, well yes there is. You can do all of the above by running the following simple command. I preferred to go over the steps so at least you know what is happening.

/bin/sharedStorageHostProfile.sh automatic <name-or-ip-of-remote-host>

After you have done this (first method or second method) you can now create your host profile of your first host. Although the other methods I described in the post of yesterday are a bit simpler, I figured I would share this as well as you never know when it may come in handy!

Host Profile noncompliant when using local SAS drives with vSphere 6?

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A couple of years ago I wrote an article titled “Host Profile noncompliant when using local SAS drives with vSphere 5?” I was informed by one of our developers that we actually solved this problem in vSphere 6. It is not something I had see yet so I figured I would look at what we did to prevent this from happening and it appears there are two ways to solve it. In 5.x we would solve it by disabling the whole tree, which is kind of a nasty workaround if you ask me. In 6.0 we fixed it in a far better way.

When you create a new host profile and edit is you now have some extra options. One of those options being able to tell if a disk is a shared cluster resource or not. By disabling this for your local SAS drives you avoid the scenario where your host profile shows up as noncompliant on each of your hosts.

There is another way of solving this. You can use “esxcli” to mark your devices correctly and then create the host profile. (SSH in to the host.)

First list all devices using the following command, I took a screenshot of my outcome but yours will look slightly different of course.

esxcli storage core device list

Now that you know your naa identifier for the device you can make the change by issueing the following command and setting “Is Shared Clusterwide” to false:

esxcli storage core device setconfig -d naa.1234 --shared-clusterwide=false

Now you can create the host profile. Hopefully you will find the cool little enhancement in esxcli and host profiles useful, I certainly do!

Host Profile noncompliant when using local SAS drives with vSphere 5?

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While playing around with vSphere 5.0 in my home lab I discovered something with regards to Host Profiles. I installed a host and created a Host Profile from that host. When I installed a new host and linked the host profile the following error would be returned (also see screenshot below) that the host was noncompliant:

Specification state absent from host: device '<datastore>' state needs to be set to 'on'
Host state doesn't match specification: device '<datastore>' needs to be reset
Specification state absent from host: device '<datastore>' Path Selection Policy needs to be set to 'VMW_PSP_FIXED'
Host state doesn't match specification: device '<datastore>' Path Selection Policy needs to be set to default for claiming SATP

After digging around I thought the issue where the ESXi installer didn’t recognize the SAS disk as a local disk and as such wouldn’t create a scratch partition and I figured this might be the same thing. I start digging and it seems to be a “similar” problem. The SAS disk is seen as a shared disk and as such the NAA identifier is stored. Now in my case each host will have a local disk and each of those disks will have a unique NAA ID which means that even if you apply your host profile it will not be compliant. After digging a bit further I bumped into a KB article (2002488) that actually describes this exact problem.

There’s a “work around” to get rid of the “compliance” alert as mentioned in the KB article:

The compliance error can be ignored if the issue is only a device ID mismatch. To avoid generating a compliance error, you can also disable the PSA and NMP profiles under Storage Configuration in the host profile as long as you do not change other PSA or NMP profile settings.

I read the article 14 times and still didn’t have a clue what they were referring to but this is how you “disable” the PSA and NMP profile for these devices:

  • Right click the Host Profile and click “Enable/Disable Profile Configuration
  • Unfold “Storage Configuration”
  • Unfold “Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA) …
  • De-select “PSA Device Configuration”
  • Unfold “Native Multi-Pathing (NMP)”
  • Unfold “PSP and SATP configuration for NMP devi…”
  • De-select “PSP configuration for”
  • Click “OK”

This resolved the issue I had. I’ve also requested the KB article (2002488) to be updated to include these steps by the way. Hopefully it will be changed soon.