VDQ Command //VSAN Related

The VDQ Command

Why is it useful?  

The vdq command, shown below is a command line utility found on esxi hosts version 6 that informs the administrator if a specific disk is available to VSANs. When used with the "-q" option, it displays every disk found, its name, its vsan uuid and why it may be inelegible for vsans. If so, it provides a reason for it.

How to use it?

1. Notice the version of esxi below.

[root@esxi01:~] esxcli system version get
   Product: VMware ESXi
   Version: 6.0.0
   Build: Releasebuild-2494585
   Update: 0
   Patch: 0

2. Run it without any options to see the available flags or use the "-h" option for help.

[root@esxi01:~] vdq
usage: vdq <cmd> <options>
commands:
-h|--help                 Output usage.

-q|--query                Query all disks for eligibility for VSAN usage.

                          May be used with --devices to limit the query to
                          only those devices.

-i|--info                 Dump out known VSAN disk mappings.

-s|--stamp                Read 512 bytes of the given device and output its
                          contents as though it were stamped with a current
                          valid VSAN_Metadata.

                          When used, vdq will return 0 if there is confidence
                          that the read stamping is sane (has a valid checksum
                          value).

options:
-H|--human                Emit human-readable output (default output Python).

-d|--devices <devNames>   Used to specify devices for use with --query.  For
                          these, devices names should be formatted as the
                          so-called SCSI disk canonical name.

                          Example: "mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0"

                          Multiple devices may be specified by delimiting them
                          with ",".

                          Example: "mpx.vmhba2:C0:T0:L0,mpx.vmhba2:C0:T1:L0"

-v|--verbose              Emit verbose information to stderr.

3. Execute it with the "-q" option to view all the disks available and related information.

[root@esxi01:~] vdq -q
[
   {
      "Name"     : "eui.68162383505096af",
      "VSANUUID" : "",
      "State"    : "Ineligible for use by VSAN",
"ChecksumSupport": "0",
      "Reason"   : "Has partitions",
      "IsSSD"    : "0",
"IsCapacityFlash": "0",
      "IsPDL"    : "0",
   },

   {
      "Name"     : "eui.b0465b2d00000000",
      "VSANUUID" : "",
      "State"    : "Ineligible for use by VSAN",
"ChecksumSupport": "0",
      "Reason"   : "Non-local disk",
      "IsSSD"    : "0",
"IsCapacityFlash": "0",
      "IsPDL"    : "0",
   },

   {
      "Name"     : "eui.28cc9920557ad9d5",
      "VSANUUID" : "",
      "State"    : "Ineligible for use by VSAN",
"ChecksumSupport": "0",
      "Reason"   : "Has partitions",
      "IsSSD"    : "0",
"IsCapacityFlash": "0",
      "IsPDL"    : "0",
   },

4. Execute the command with the "-q" and "-d" option to view the attributes of a specific disk.

[root@esxi01:~] vdq -q -d mpx.vmhba1:C0:T0:L0
[
   {
      "Name"     : "mpx.vmhba1:C0:T0:L0",
      "VSANUUID" : "",
      "State"    : "Ineligible for use by VSAN",
"ChecksumSupport": "0",
      "Reason"   : "Has partitions",
      "IsSSD"    : "1",
"IsCapacityFlash": "0",
      "IsPDL"    : "0",
   },

Final Note: "IsSSD =1" = yes "IsSSD=0" = no