VSphere LUN naa identifier decoded and explained

In VMware VSphere, the identifier comes in the form of naa.aaaaaaaabbbbbbbbbbbbccccdddddddd

I’ve been able to find this information from multiple sources, so I think it is very accurate. Your comments are welcome if it doesn't match your case.

The breakdown is as follows:

• aaaaaaaa is an 8 digit vendor identifier, and I’ve listed the vendors we use below, as well as others I’ve been able to find online:

o    60060480 <— EMC

o    60060e80 <— HDS

o    60a98000 <— NetApp

o    60060160 <— DGC (Clariion)

o    6090a038 <— EQL

I found that in certain cases, you can also do a lookup of the vendor. To do that drop the leading ‘6’ and then take digits 2 to 8 and enter them into an OUI lookup tool http://www.wireshark.org/tools/oui-lookup.html . e.g. entering 0060480 to an OUI lookup confirms the vendor is EMC.

• bbbbbbbbbbbb is a 12 digit serial # of the device providing the storage.  This may differ from device to device, but matches up perfectly to the id’s of our EMC storage.
• cccc is a 4 digit code for model (at least for EMC). Please double check with your storage system.

-               on VMAX it’s ‘5330’ on all luns

-               on DMX-3 it’s also ‘5330’

-               on DMX-3000 it’s ‘4E45′

• dddddddd is an 8 digit LUN identifier.  This differs based on the device on how the device ID is actually represented. I will explain how to decode this number for EMC in a future post.