VMware Site Recovery Manager – Error while executing ‘DiscoverLuns’ command.

During a VMware Site Recovery Manager implementation, I ran into this pesky error.  Not really an SRM error specifically (more of an issue with the SRA) but a show stopper non the less for SRM. 

Environment:
VMware Site Recovery 4.1 running on vSphere 4.1 with NetApp on the backend.  All NFS.  Using the 1.4.3 NetApp SRA.

Issue:
While configuring the Array Manager in the SRM setup, you receive an error after adding in the SAN.  “Error while executing ‘discoverLuns’ command”.

Workaround:

After searching around, I was able to find a knowledgebase article on NetApp’s site.  A NOW account is required.  (Here (No longer Available))

It seems as though the SRA requires an iGroup with a VMWARE OS type.  Even in environment that are ALL NFS, the SRA wants to see an iGroup with a VMware type.  The way around the bug is to just create a dummy group to satisfy the SRA.

For those that don’t care to login to a knowledgebase (Read my Rant here), here is the way around your issue.

How To:

Create a dummy initiator group of ostype vmware.

Example:
igroup create -i -t vmware VMware

iSCSI or FCP license is not required to create an initiator group. The initiator group does not require that initiators are added.

Select any string for the name of the iGroup. In the example above, the name of the iGroup is VMware. An FCP dummy iGroup may also be created instead of iSCSI. However, FCP iGroup cannot be created on a MultiStore vFiler.

Hopefully this will be fixed in future versions of the SRA.