[ale] Getting rid of VMware

[Jim Kinney]

That sounds like the hardware nodes supports the iscsi protocol or the base hypervisor layer from vmware is doing the iscsi connection. Probably the later.

Either way, you're going have a challenge unless you can get details on the iscsi  contents. You'll need to tie each virtual drive to it's correct device. Otherwise virtual machine A gets the drive space of virtual machine B.

From ESX you can get the UUID string of the virtual drive used by that linux vm. 

I would use that vm now as just a source for a backup. Then restore to the new hardware machine running a base install with restore bits. The iscsi array will still need a partition to use for the hardware linux. I doubt vmware will make this easy.

Un-virtualizing the drive on an iscsi array sounds like lots of pain. Retire first.

On March 11, 2021 5:37:36 PM EST, Tod Fassl via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>Soonish, I am going  to have to take an ISCSI array that is currently 
>talking to a VMWare virtual machine running Linux and connect it to a 
>real Linux machine. The problem is that I don't know how the Linux 
>virtual machine talks to the array. It appears as /dev/sdb on the Linux
>
>virtual machine and is mounted via /etc/fstab like its just a regular
>HD 
>on the machine.
>
>
>So I figure some explanation of how we got here is in order. My
>previous 
>boss bought VMWare thinking we could take 4 24-core machines and make 
>one big 96-core virtual machine out of them. He has since retired.
>Since 
>I was rather skeptical of VMWare from the start, the job of dealing
>with 
>the cluster was given to a co-worker. He has since moved on. I know
>just 
>enough about VMWare ESXI to keep the thing working. My new boss wants
>to 
>get rid of VMWare and re-install everything on the bare metal machines.
>
>
>The VMWare host has 4 ethernet cables running to the switch. But there 
>is only 1 virtual network port on the Linux virtual machine.   However,
>
>lspci shows 32 "lines with VMware PCI Express Root" (whatever that is):
>
>
># lspci
>00:07.7 System peripheral: VMware Virtual Machine Communication 
>Interface (rev 10)
>00:10.0 SCSI storage controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic 53c1030
>PCI-X 
>Fusion-MPT Dual Ultra320 SCSI (rev 01)
>00:11.0 PCI bridge: VMware PCI bridge (rev 02)
>00:15.0 PCI bridge: VMware PCI Express Root Port (rev 01)
>[...]
>00:18.7 PCI bridge: VMware PCI Express Root Port (rev 01)
>02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet
>
>Controller (Copper) (rev 01)
>
>
>The open-iscsi package is not installed on the Linux virtual machine. 
>However, the ISCSI array shows up as /dev/sdb:
>
># lsscsi
>[2:0:0:0]    disk    VMware   Virtual disk     1.0   /dev/sda
>[2:0:1:0]    disk    EQLOGIC  100E-00          8.1   /dev/sdb
>
>
>I'd kinda like to get the ISCSI array connected to a new bare metal 
>Linux server w/o losing everybody's files. Do you think I can just 
>follow the various hotos out there on connecting an ISCSI array w/o too
>
>much trouble?
>
>
>
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