How to identify NetApp iSCSI LUN serial number in a ESXi host.

In NetApp side iSCSI LUNs can be identified by Serial number, or LUN path, or even LUN id. But the same LUNs in ESXi can have the same LUN id, but you can have LUNs with the same LUN id from different systems. Besides that the LUNs in ESXi can only be identified by the identifier ID.

So if you have a large VMware environment(with different Storage systems or vendors) searching a LUN by id is not suitable some times. So one of the option is to get the LUN serial number on ESXi host.

The problem searching iSCSI LUNs by NetApp serial is that in NetApp the serial number is in string type, and on the ESXi hosts is in hexadecimal type.

So we have two options:

1. ESXi host we ca check and converting LUN identifier.

Ffrom the Storage Adapters option. But this is in hexadecimal type, so we need to convert to a string. Because on NetApp side, LUN id is set as a string

First we need to copy the LUN identifier on ESXi host:

•     In vSphere Cli, select the host, configuration tab, and then storage adapters.
•     Select iSCSI Adapter
•     Click devices tab in the View area
•     Right click the LUN that you need and choose: “Copy identifier to clipboard”

Now we need to convert this Hex to string. We can use any online converter, like this one: Converter

•     Past the Hexadecimal to the Hexadecimal box and click convert.

In the String box we get the serial number. There will be some strange characters in the beginning, just ignore them.

In our example is a NetApp iSCSI LUN:

Hexadecimal identifier: naa.60a98000427045773024473563687148
Converted to String: ??©€�BpEw0$G5chqH (in this case we will ignore the initial ??©€�)
After we have the serial number we can send to the Storage guys which LUN is which in the VMware infrastructure, so that they can compare with their LUN path

2. In the NetApp side, we can check our iSCSI LUNs

How to display the iSCSI LUNs

dataontap001> lun show -v

We get this output for the same LUN that we check in ESXi host:

As we can see here in this example, we can see the LUN serial, but also the LUN path.

Then if you want to know the Hexadecimal on this particularly LUN, we can do by using the command:  lun serial -x

As we can see the id is the same has we have copy in our ESXi(except the initial naa.number)

Hope this can help you identify your LUNs in NetApp vs ESXi hosts.

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