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.

How to identify NetApp LUN ID in VMware VSphere?

When using Netapp as your SAN storage, the TL / DR (Target Lun / Device Representation), also known as the VMware LUN identifier, is the hex representation of the NetApp LUN Serial No. string. It is as easy as it sounds:

1.       In vSphere, select the host configuration tab, storage.

2.       Select the Devices View   

3.       Sort by LUN # and locate the LUN you want to verify.

4.       Right click the LUN in the Devices list and select "Copy identifier to clipboard", i.e., naa.600a09803830336d785d476d634c424d

5.       Paste the characters after “naa.” into a Hex to String converter. (i.e., 600a09803830336d785d476d634c424d)

http://www.string-functions.com/hex-string.aspx

http://www.convertstring.com/EncodeDecode/HexDecode

6.       Copy the converted string and paste to a work note. It may contain some special characters, so just concentrate on the readable portion. i.e., 803mx]GmcLBM

7.       In the NetApp System manager, select the LUN you want to verify in the LUN list.

8.       In the LUN properties pane, copy the Serial No. i.e.,  803mx]GmcLBM

9.       Paste Serial No. below the converted hex in the work note and compare.  There may be some odd ASCII characters at the beginning of the converted hex that you can ignore.

Note an alternate method to get the NetApp LUN Serial No. value in the CLI, use the command:

lun show -v