Thursday, August 09, 2012

iScsi SendTarget issues with MD3620i and VMM

I have a small Hyper-V cluster with 3 Dell R610s and a MD3620i storage array using 10G iScsi. The event log on the MD3600 unit generates an informational event every 30 minutes.  This makes the log very hard to read and slow to load.

Here is the full event:

Event type: 180C
Description: iSCSI connection terminated unexpectedly
Event specific codes: 0/0/0
Event category: Internal
Component type: iSCSI Initiator
Component location: 
Logged by: RAID Controller Module in slot 0

As I was tracking this down, I started investigating the event log on my host servers.  I found several MSiSCSI 113 warnings every half hour:  

Log Name:      System
Source:        MSiSCSI
Event ID:      113
Task Category: None
Description:
iSCSI discovery via SendTargets failed with error code 0x00001068 to target portal *192.168.1.2 0003260 Root\ISCSIPRT\0000_0 .

The warning would repeat for every target portal IP address of the MD3600.

After a lot of digging on the internet, I discovered this forum post: SCVMM 2008 R2 - Host Refresh causes Event ID 113 MSiSCSI events on Hyper-V Cluster. VMM will run a refresh on the cluster every 30 min and that refresh generates those errors.  It looks like the iSCSI paths are checked and target discovery is ran.  The solution at the bottom of the thread by bellacotim resolved this issue for me.

The problem is that, even though not all iSCSI HBA instances can actually reach the target in question, the user had set up the Discovery Portal to issue iSCSI "Send Targets" along all possible iSCSI HBAs + the MSFT SW initator.  This is the default behavior if all one does is specify the specific initiator.
To properly configure discovery, do the following (assumes a fresh environment):
  • Open the iSCSI Initiator GUI
  • Select the Discovery Tab
  • Click "Discovery Portal..." button to open the Discovery Target Portal dialog
  • Enter the IP address (optionally TCP Port number) of the target's iSCSI portal
  • Click "Advanced..." button to open the Advanced Settings dialog
  • On the "Local Adapter:" pulldown, select a specific HBA instance you *know* can actually connect to the target.  Hint:  By inspecting the list of IPs for this HBA instance (see 7 below), one can gain this knowledge
  • On the "Initiator IP:" pulldown, select the local address from which this HBA should connect from
  • Click OK to close the Advanced Settings dialog
  • Click OK to save your changes
  • Repeat from (3) for all Initiator - Target combinations
I would perform these steps during a maintenance window. It gives a warning about disconnecting active sessions when removing existing discovery targets. 

The good news from what I can tell is that its only filling up event logs with clutter.  As far as I can tell, it is not causing any performance issues. It also looks like it shows up connecting to the other MD units when using iSCSI.  MD3000i MD3200i MD3220i MD3600i MD3620i

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