Often you have to check the paths on your hosts.

At least if you upgrade your UCS or SAN infrastructure 😉 Do it with PowerCLI!

I spent a big amount of time last week doing research on this topic, doing these checks with PowerCLI.

I just wanted to see (per host) which HBA has it’s paths to his storage (like in the vSphere Client):

[Show slideshow]

There are lots of approaches for this.

jfrmilner: Check for “Dead” paths on HBAs with PowerCLI

or this performance optimized version practical-admin.com: PowerCLI: Show HBA Path Status

But every script I found was displaying incorrect path numbers. They all made the same mistake, counting the paths from datastore side. If you want to get the same result as in vSphere client, you should have a look on my script.

So I had to find my way …

At this point there goes a big thank you to “PowerCLI God” LucD 😉

Finally I came up with a script that does exactly what I have imagined:

function Get-FCPaths
{
  <#
      .SYNOPSIS
      It shows the HBA's with it's Paths (Active,Dead,Standby)
      .DESCRIPTION
      You can check a single Host, a Cluster or even a DataCenter to show it's HBA's and their paths.
      It's tested with Cisco UCS Blades including VIC Cards and QLogic FC HBA's in Dell Hosts.
      Check the Driver Name (and edit in Line 75) in case of trouble.
      .EXAMPLE

      Get-FCPaths -vHost myHost-01

      Get-FCPaths -vHost myHost-*

      Get-FCPaths -Cluster myCluster

      Get-FCPaths -DataCenter myDataCenter

     .EXAMPLE Output

      VMHost  Device Active Standby Dead
      ------  ------ ------ ------- ----
      Host-01 vmhba1      0       0    4
      Host-01 vmhba2      4       0    0

   #>
  [CmdletBinding()]
  param
  (
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false, Position=0)]
    [System.String]
    $vHost = "",
    
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false, Position=1)]
    [System.String]
    $Cluster = "",
    
    [Parameter(Mandatory=$false, Position=2)]
    [System.String]
    $DataCenter = ""
  )
  
  #Check which Variable is filled
  if([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($vHost)) {            
    #Write-Host "Given string is NULL or EMPTY"
    
  } else {            
    #Write-Host "Set vobject" 
    $vobject = (Get-VMHost $vHost)  | Sort-Object -Property Name              
  }
  
  if([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($Cluster)) {            
    #Write-Host "Given string is NULL or EMPTY"  
  } else {            
    #Write-Host "Set vobject" 
    $vobject = (Get-Cluster $Cluster| Get-VMHost)  | Sort-Object -Property Name            
  }
  
  if([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($DataCenter)) {            
    #Write-Host "Given string is NULL or EMPTY"
    
  } else {            
    #Write-Host "Set vobject"
    $vobject = (Get-DataCenter $DataCenter| Get-VMHost)  | Sort-Object -Property Parent,Name              
  }
  
  
  
  foreach($vmhost in ($vobject)){
    
    $esx = Get-VMHost -Name $vmhost
    $report = @()
    # fc or fnic for UCS VIC-Cards
    foreach($hba in ($esx.ExtensionData.Config.StorageDevice.HostBusAdapter | where{$_.Driver -match 'fc' -or  $_.Driver -match 'fnic'})){
      $paths = @()
      foreach($lun in $esx.ExtensionData.Config.StorageDevice.MultipathInfo.Lun){
        $paths += $lun.Path | where{$_.Adapter -match "$($hba.Device)" -and $_.Adapter -match 'FibreChannel'}
      }
      $groups = $paths | Group-Object -Property PathState
      $report += $hba | Select @{N='VMHost';E={$esx.Name}},Device,
      @{N='Active';E={($groups | where{$_.Name -eq 'active'}).Count}},
      @{N='Standby';E={($groups | where{$_.Name -eq 'standby'}).Count}},
      @{N='Dead';E={($groups | where{$_.Name -eq 'dead'}).Count}}
    }
    Write-Host "Cluster: "$vmhost.Parent
    $report | ft -AutoSize
    
  }
}

The output should look like this:

PS C:\Users\myuser> Get-FCPaths -Cluster MyCluster-0*
Cluster:  MyCluster-01

VMHost  Device Active Standby Dead
------  ------ ------ ------- ----
Host-01 vmhba3      2       1    0
Host-01 vmhba4      3       0    0


Cluster:  MyCluster-01

VMHost  Device Active Standby Dead
------  ------ ------ ------- ----
Host-02 vmhba3      2       1    0
Host-02 vmhba4      3       0    0


Cluster:  MyCluster-02

VMHost  Device Active Standby Dead
------  ------ ------ ------- ----
Host-03 vmhba1      2       0    0
Host-03 vmhba2      2       0    0


Cluster:  MyCluster-02

VMHost  Device Active Standby Dead
------  ------ ------ ------- ----
Host-04 vmhba1      2       0    0
Host-04 vmhba2      2       0    0

UPDATE:

There is a cosmetic issue in ESXi 6.0 U3! See VMware KB 2149992

This causes a wrong number of active paths shown.

UPDATE2:

It works correctly again with ESXi 6.5 U1 🙂