SHIFT-WIKI - Sjoerd Hooft's InFormation Technology
This WIKI is my personal documentation blog. Please enjoy it and feel free to reach out through blue sky if you have a question, remark, improvement or observation. See below for the latest additions, or use the search or tags to browse for content.
Fix: FCP Partner Path Misconfigured
Summary: The error 'FCP Partner Path Misconfigured' could show up in the autosupport report created on NetApp filers, and means a LUN is being accessed over the partner path through the interconnect link rather than through the preferred primary (optimized) path.
Date: Around 2019
Refactor: 9 January 2025: Checked links and formatting.
Finding and resolving the issue is a matter of a few steps:
- Identify the LUN which is being accessed over the partner path
- Identify the host initiator for the LUN
- Identify the correct target WWPN of the filer
- Solve the path selection error
Vmware ESXTOP
Summary: A short post about using esxtop on vmware esx hosts.
Date: Around 2016
Refactor: 4 January 2025: Checked links and formatting.
Esxtop allows monitoring and collection of data for all system resources: CPU, memory, disk and network. When used interactively, this data can be viewed on different types of screens; one each for CPU statistics, memory statistics, network statistics, disk adapter statistics, disk device statistics, disk VM statistics and interrupt statistics.
Creating an ESXi 5.1 Scratch Partition
Summary: How to setup an ESXi 5.1 Scratch Partition.
Date: Around 2013
Refactor: 21 February 2025: Checked links and formatting.
When using ESXi 5.1 while running from an usb drive a random datastore is selected by ESXi to store the host's logfiles. If you would detach this datastore the logfiles are lost, which is not really something you want. This article shows how to create a scratch partition and how to tell ESXi to use it. Note that you'll need a reboot and this is only necessary on ESXi hosts running without local storage.
The procedure for doing this is pretty straight forward:
- Create a datastore
- Set the size to about 1-5 GB per host that will use it
- Attach the datastore to the host and create a directory in it
- The VMware default for the directory name is
.locker-hostname
- Configure scratch partition on host's advanced settings
- Go to Configuration tab → Advanced Settings → ScratchConfig
- Fill in the ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation variable like this: /vmfs/volumes/<datastorename>/.locker-esxihostXXX
- Note that after a reboot the friendly name will dissappear and change something like
/vmfs/volumes/50d82ad1-872mrt40-a404-5cf3fabcf838/.locker-esxihostXXX - Als note that this friendly name is still used when browsing through the datastore using the Datastore Browser utility
- Reboot host
- Check that files have been created in the directory