Troubleshooting IP storage visibility

Although most of the troubleshooting techniques between Fibre Channel and IP storage overlap (mostly between FC and iSCSI since they both use block transport and VMFS partition), there are quite a few differences between the two storage types. Since we are now using network adapters inside our hosts and network switches (as opposed to HBAs and FC switches), most of the same concepts around network security such as firewalls, routes, and so on will also be applied to our iSCSI and NFS storage.

Verifying network connectivity to our iSCSI and NFS array

The first step we should always take when experiencing connectivity issues to our network storage is to verify connectivity between our two endpoints; the host and the storage. This may include properly assigning network information to our hardware iSCSI initiators or properly creating a VMkernel port group for the software iSCSI initiator or NFS client. No matter what the issue is, we need to ensure that the...