Unregistered hosts with CLARiiON iSCSI

I ran into an issue recently where I was unable to register w2k8 hosts in Navisphere completely with the naviagent. The host would communicate with Navisphere and autoregister the iqns but the host itself would show a "U" (unregistered) status. Also, Navisphere would now show host info such as drive mappings etc... I spent a lot of time going over settings and rechecking configurations. It was really bizarre and an issue I had never encountered in the Fiber Channel environment. After working with EMC support, the solution finally came out. When using iSCSI on Windows servers to connect to a CLARiiON iSCSI storage system, the iSCSI NICs on the hosts cannot be the first bound NIC.

This solution is elaborated upon in the EMC solution emc191748.

You can check the binding order in a number of ways.

Use the netsh interface

1. Go to "Network and Dial-up Connections." (For Windows 2008, select "Manage Network Connections.")
2. From the toolbar select Advanced/Advanced Settings.
3. In the "Adapters and Bindings" tab, ensure that the NIC used for normal, non-iSCSI traffic is at the top of the list, followed by the iSCSI NICs.
4. If you need to change this order, a reboot is required or you can use the follow two commands to turn off/on each NIC.
   
   To disable:
   
   netsh interface set interface <interface name> DISABLED
   
   To re-enable:
   
   netsh interface set interface <interface name> ENABLED
   
   Run these two commands for each NIC.

Use the ipconfig/all command

You can use the ipconfig/all command from a command prompt. For Windows 2000 and 2003, the NICs will display in reverse order, that is, the first NIC listed is the lowest NIC in the binding order. For Windows 2008, the order of the NICs will follow the correct sequence, that is, the first NIC listed will be the NIC bound.

Using netstat-rn command

For Windows 2008 servers you can use the netstat-rn command.

The numbers listed in the left column reflect the binding order with the lowest number being the first NIC bound. For Windows 2000 and 2003, it is the opposite.

C:\Users\Administrator>netstat -rn
===================================================================
Interface List
10 ...00 14 22 b1 7b ae .........Intel(R) PRO/1000 MB Dual Port Server Connection* (See note below.)
11 ...00 14 22 b1 7b af ...... ...Intel(R) PRO/1000 MB Dual Port Server Connection #2** (See note below.)

1 ................................... Software Loopback Interface 1*** (See note below.)

12 ...02 00 54 55 4e 01 ......... Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
13 ...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 isatap.{14388A07-03E6-48AE-A713-D835413A72A5}
14 ...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 6TO4 Adapter
16 ...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 isatap.{6838E21C-4151-41EB-89E6-7C005E8E58A2}

* Second bound NIC. This is the first, real NIC. It does show up in the GUI.

** Third bound NIC. This is the second, real NIC. It does show up in the GUI.

*** First bound NIC. This is the localhost and will not show up in the GUI list above.

Note See solution emc159428.