I wanted to try to find out the health of my hard drives on a server running VMware ESXi 5. Not even thinking, I used the smartctl command in one of my linux guests.<\/p>\n
# smartctl –all \/dev\/sda
\nsmartctl 5.43 2012-06-30 r3573 [x86_64-linux-2.6.32-431.17.1.el6.x86_64] (local build)
\nCopyright (C) 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http:\/\/smartmontools.sourceforge.net<\/p>\nVendor: VMware
\nProduct: Virtual disk
\nRevision: 1.0
\nUser Capacity: 107,374,182,400 bytes [107 GB]
\nLogical block size: 512 bytes
\nDevice type: disk
\nLocal Time is: Mon Aug 18 11:18:29 2014 PDT
\nDevice does not support SMART<\/p>\nError Counter logging not supported
\nDevice does not support Self Test logging<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWhen I saw the output above, I was hoping for something I could run from the guest to get the information. Unfortunately, it looks like this something that has to be done from the host OS. You need to use the esxcli command to get the information. First, you need to identify the disks:<\/p>\n
~ # esxcli storage core device list
\nt10.ATA_____ST32000542AS________________________________________5XW25D4F
\n Display Name: Local ATA Disk (t10.ATA_____ST32000542AS________________________________________5XW25D4F)
\n Has Settable Display Name: true
\n Size: 1907729
\n Device Type: Direct-Access
\n Multipath Plugin: NMP
\n Devfs Path: \/vmfs\/devices\/disks\/t10.ATA_____ST32000542AS________________________________________5XW25D4F
\n Vendor: ATA
\n Model: ST32000542AS
\n Revision: CC34
\n SCSI Level: 5
\n Is Pseudo: false
\n Status: on
\n Is RDM Capable: false
\n Is Local: true
\n Is Removable: false
\n Is SSD: false
\n Is Offline: false
\n Is Perennially Reserved: false
\n Queue Full Sample Size: 0
\n Queue Full Threshold: 0
\n Thin Provisioning Status: unknown
\n Attached Filters:
\n VAAI Status: unknown
\n Other UIDs: vml.01000000002020202020202020202020203558573235443446535433323030
\n Is Local SAS Device: false
\n Is Boot USB Device: false\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAs you can see, this provides a lot interesting information about the drive. However, if you have a lot of drives, it can be more information than you need. I used grep to filtered out the unneeded information:<\/p>\n
~ # esxcli storage core device list | egrep “^t10”
\nt10.ATA_____ST32000542AS________________________________________5XW25D4F
\nt10.ATA_____WDC_WD20EARX2D00PASB0_________________________WD2DWCAZAK376887
\nt10.ATA_____WDC_WD20EARS2D00MVWB0_________________________WD2DWMAZA3727224
\nt10.ATA_____WDC_WD5003ABYX2D18WERA0_______________________WD2DWMAYP2756258\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThat way, I can identify all the drives in my system in a neat list.<\/p>\n
Then, to view the S.M.A.R.T. information:<\/p>\n
~ # esxcli storage core device smart get -d t10.ATA_____ST32000542AS________________________________________5XW25D4F
\nParameter Value Threshold Worst
\n—————————- —– ——— —–
\nHealth Status OK N\/A N\/A
\nMedia Wearout Indicator N\/A N\/A N\/A
\nWrite Error Count N\/A N\/A N\/A
\nRead Error Count 111 6 99
\nPower-on Hours 66 0 66
\nPower Cycle Count 100 20 100
\nReallocated Sector Count 100 36 100
\nRaw Read Error Rate 111 6 99
\nDrive Temperature 42 0 46
\nDriver Rated Max Temperature 58 45 54
\nWrite Sectors TOT Count 200 0 200
\nRead Sectors TOT Count N\/A N\/A N\/A
\nInitial Bad Block Count 100 99 100\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I wanted to try to find out the health of my hard drives on a server running VMware ESXi 5. Not even thinking, I used the smartctl command in one of my linux guests. # smartctl –all \/dev\/sda smartctl 5.43 2012-06-30 r3573 [x86_64-linux-2.6.32-431.17.1.el6.x86_64] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http:\/\/smartmontools.sourceforge.net Vendor: VMware Product: [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[160,377,33],"class_list":["post-1126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-documentation","tag-esx","tag-smart","tag-vmware"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jim-zimmerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jim-zimmerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jim-zimmerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jim-zimmerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jim-zimmerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1126"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jim-zimmerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1130,"href":"https:\/\/jim-zimmerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions\/1130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jim-zimmerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jim-zimmerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jim-zimmerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}