ONTAP Tools for VMware vSphere: A primer on how discovery works and can be adjusted

Applies to

• ONTAP Tools for VMware vSphere 9.x (OTV)
• Virtual Storage Console (VSC)

Description

ONTAP Tools for VMware vSphere triggers a discovery in the following ways:

• Immediately after services startup
• Daily scheduled discovery (by default at 6 AM local time)
• Automatic discovery whenever there is a datastore related event in the vSphere event logs

The following vCenter events will result in triggering a OTV / VSC discovery:

// Datastore events
vim.event.DatastoreCapacityIncreasedEvent 
vim.event.DatastoreDestroyedEvent 
vim.event.DatastoreDuplicatedEvent 
vim.event.DatastoreRenamedEvent 

// Host events
vim.event.DatastoreDiscoveredEvent
vim.event.DatastorePrincipalConfigured 
vim.event.DatastoreRemovedOnHostEvent 
vim.event.DatastoreRenamedOnHostEvent 
vim.event.LocalDatastoreCreatedEvent 
vim.event.NASDatastoreCreatedEvent 
vim.event.NoDatastoresConfiguredEvent 
vim.event.VMFSDatastoreCreatedEvent 
vim.event.VMFSDatastoreExpandedEvent 
vim.event.VMFSDatastoreExtendedEvent 

When OTV discovery occurs, ONTAP tools:

• First performs a ESXi host discovery.  One of the objectives of the host discovery is to identify IP addresses associated with storage.  This could be:
  • NFS Mount Points
  • iSCSI Targets
• OTV then performs a discovery against any storage systems present.  This can include:
  • Authenticated storage systems
  • Non-Authenticated storage systems
    •  These storage system addresses are pulled from the ESXi host discovery
    • If ESXi is unable to authenticate these storage addresses or associate them with a known Storage System, these storage addresses are marked as "Unknown"