Howto: Check if SAN cables are connected in ESX

When installing an ESX host and you have someone other than yourself taking care of the cabling of the host, it is very handy to be able to check wheather this has been done properly. You want to be able to verify that the HBA's have been physically connected to the fabric switches with fibre cables.

Ssh to the ESX host

ls to the /proc/scsi/qla2300 folder (if it's a Qlogic HBA...)

In this folder there are a number of text files named with the numbers 1-x corresponding to the number of HBA ports in your ESX.

Cat the files one at a time:

#cat 1

or

#cat /proc/scsi/qla2300/1

look for the following line in the files:

Host adapter:loop state=READY, flags= 0x8430403

If it says READY, the HBA has been physically connected to the fibre switch. If it says DEAD, then it is not.