Why does the Cisco UCS server not discover external storage arrays?

[Translator]

Hello, Cisco community,

My Cisco UCS B200 M5 server is experiencing problems and does not detect an external storage array for the NetApp FAS 8200 connected via a Fibre Channel connection. We've tried a variety of troubleshooting steps, but the problem hasn't been resolved and we hope you'll get some insight here.

Details are as follows: External storage arrays are connected via Fiber Channel via the Cisco MDS 9148S switch, and servers are managed using Cisco UCS Manager (version 4.1). Both the UCS server and the storage array have been updated to the latest firmware version with the latest storage profile configuration.

Everything was working properly until firmware updates were performed on both the UCS infrastructure and the storage array last week. The UCS Server no longer discovers external storage arrays. We have verified that all cabling is correct and the storage array itself is working when tested independently. Zoning and LUN masking on the storage side has also been verified and appears to be set appropriately.

UCS Manager has verified the storage profile and WWPN mapping to ensure that the correct Fiber Channel uplink is configured. You also attempted to restart both the UCS server and the storage array to re-establish the connection, but the problem did not resolve.

We checked the UCS Manager logs and found no clear error message indicating why the server cannot find external storage. Are there any UCS-specific settings that you are missing? To further troubleshoot Fibre Channel connectivity and storage discovery issues, we would appreciate if you could provide us with CLI commands and UCS diagnostic tools.

We hope you will have some guidance and troubleshooting tips to help us solve this problem. Thank you in advance.

[Steven Tardy]

"SAN team verified zoning and LUN masking is correct" - If I had a dollar for every time Cisco UCS TAC heard this and it is still an upstream SAN configuration issue. . . .

Google:

ucs troubleshoot fc connection

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/servers-unified-computing/ucs-b-series-blade-servers/115764-ucs-san-tshoot-00.html

Need to check the output of UCS command (assure server vFC interfaces are pinned out the UCS uplink):

show npv flogi-table

And upstream MDS command (assure zones are correct and look for the "*" to validate currently active):

show zoneset active

Without this data there could be numerous issues.

Sometimes bouncing the FI<>SAN switch links allows devices to "re-flogi" and start working.