Get the iSCSI iqn of an ESX(i) using vSphere CLI

When you are trying to configure iSCSI of and ESX(i) server from the command line is clear that at some point you are going to need the iqn. Of course you can  use the vSphere Client to get the iqn but the Unix Geek inside me really wants to do it from the shell.

After a small research through the vSphere CLI documentation and several blogs I found this post by Jon Owings (@2vcps).

First list the SCSI devices available in the system to get the iSCSI hba.

[root@esx02 ~]# esxcfg-scsidevs -a
vmhba0  mptspi            link-n/a  pscsi.vmhba0                            (0:0:16.0) LSI Logic / Symbios Logic LSI Logic Parallel SCSI Controller
vmhba1  ata_piix          link-n/a  ide.vmhba1                              (0:0:7.1) Intel Corporation Virtual Machine Chipset
vmhba32 ata_piix          link-n/a  ide.vmhba32                             (0:0:7.1) Intel Corporation Virtual Machine Chipset
vmhba33 iscsi_vmk         online    iscsi.vmhba33                           iSCSI Software Adapter         
[root@esx02 ~]#

After that Jon uses the command vmkiscsi-tool to get the iqn.

[root@esx02 ~]# vmkiscsi-tool -I -l vmhba33
iSCSI Node Name: iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:esx02-42b0f47e
[root@esx02 ~]#

Beauty, isn’t it? But I found one glitch. This method is done from the ESX root shell but how do I get the iqn from the vMA? Some of my hosts are ESXi and even for the ESX I use the vMA to perform my everyday administration tasks.

There is no vmkiscsi-tool command in the vMA, instead we are going to use the vicfg-iscsi or the vicfg-scsidevs command.

With vicfg-scsidevs we can obtain the iqn listed in the UID column.

[vi-admin@vma ~][esx02.mlab.local]$ vicfg-scsidevs -a             
Adapter_ID  Driver      UID                                     PCI      Vendor & Model
vmhba0      mptspi      pscsi.vmhba0                            (0:16.0) LSI Logic Parallel SCSI Controller
vmhba1      ata_piix    unknown.vmhba1                          (0:7.1)  Virtual Machine Chipset
vmhba32     ata_piix    ide.vmhba32                             (0:7.1)  Virtual Machine Chipset
vmhba33     iscsi_vmk   iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:esx02-42b0f47e   ()       iSCSI Software Adapter
[vi-admin@vma ~][esx02.mlab.local]$

And with vicfg-iscsi we can get the iqn providing the vmhba device.

[vi-admin@vma ~][esx02.mlab.local]$ vicfg-iscsi --iscsiname --list vmhba33
iSCSI Node Name   : iqn.1998-01.com.vmware:esx02-42b0f47e
iSCSI Node Alias  :
[vi-admin@vma ~][esx02.mlab.local]$

The next logical step is to use PowerCLI to retrieve the iqn, but I’ll leave that for a future post.

Juanma.