Storage Permission

[Ryan_1]

we have ESX3.5 farm with SAN attached.

In our org., one person from each OS team has admin rights to the Virtual center & they can create VMs on their own OS.

some people create VMs in the ESX local disk rather than selecting the SAN, though we had sent lot of mails - not to do that. so we cant vmotion those VMs.

is there any way to restrict that, by restricting permission in the host level that no one can create file/folder in local stoage in /vmfs/volumes. i did change the permission of the local storage directory, but it doesnt work in the way its supposed to be.

[williamarrata]

Why don't you just, from the VC, click on the local storage and remove it.

Hope that helped.

[mike_laspina]

Hello,

Not from a permissions angle.

But I would suggest you load it up with dummy files using dd and then they will not have the space available to add VM's

e.g

dd if=/dev/zero count=4096 bs=1024 of=/vmfs/volumes/storename/Dummy/sample.vmdk

[Ryan_1]

Thank you for your suggestions. i think, i can remove the local datastore in VC.

first, am working on migrating the VMs to SAN. then i'll remove the datastore.

but what about the data in in the local storage. I dont think that will be erased, after i remove the datastore in VC. will it?

Mike - though your suugestion would be helpful, i cant show that as a soln. to my higher mgmt. but thank you, though.

[mike_laspina]

You will not lose any data on the ESX server once you have migrated the VM off of it, but do check templates and iso files that may not be in view. vmfs local stores can be usefull in a configuration that has lot of vswp activity. You don't want a lot of chatty small I/O constantly hitting the SAN. You can point the vswp file to the local disk in those cases. But most of the time in smaller env's that not an issue.

[Ryan_1]

i migrated all the VMs away from the local storage to SAN.

still i couldnt remove the datastore in VC. I'm getting the error message - "Error during the configuration of the host:DestroyVmfsDatastore: cant delete partition 11 on lun vmhba4:0:0"

Vmkernel log - Failed to flush buffer for object: Read only

vmkwarning - Cant write through read-only handle

If i go for ls -a in local storage, i'm able to see .sf files.

[mike_laspina]

The read-only message may be a hint. Were changes to permissions made on the vmfs volume in the past?

[Ryan_1]

thank your for the reply... there were no changes done to the vmfs volume permission

[mike_laspina]

It could be a VC issue, disconnect and reconnect the host in VC and try it again.

If it persists it may require a rescan on that hba and finnally as the last resort a restart on that ESX host.

[Ryan_1]

i dont think its a VC issue, coz we have 2 VCs & we are having the same issue in both of them for any ESX.

couldnt remove the local storage from the ESX datastore

[mike_laspina]

Strange I have removed local stores on many esx servers without any issues.

So you are seeing the same results on multiple VC farms.

What steps have you tried?

Disconnect?

Rescan?

Restart?

[Ryan_1]

i tried all the options, but doesnt help me.

i have ESX3.0.2 build 95415 in VC2.0.2

[mike_laspina]

I can think of only one other way to accomplish the removal of the vmfs local store and that is to remove the partition at init level 1.

I can instruct on the process but are you sure you don't want to suggest to your management that you fill the store and leave it alone?

I think this is the most appropriate method as it leaves it available for templates ISO's etc.

Your call.