•”“Process Has an Exclusive Lock” Message” on page 342

•”Some EMC Volumes, Their LUNs and LUN Maskings Are Hidden” on page 343

About Provisioning on EMC Symmetrix Storage Systems

EMC ships its Symmetrix storage system with volumes already created. When the software first discovers an EMC Symmetrix storage system, it assumes the devices on the Symmetrix storage system are volumes.

This software refers to the term “device” to define a piece of hardware in the storage network. EMC uses the term “device” to refer to a volume on one of its storage systems. In this section, the term “device” is used in the context of EMC storage systems.

When you use the software's “create a volume” feature, you are assigning the already created volume. If necessary the software will create a meta device, which is a device that is a concatenation of several devices.

The software does not delete the volumes created by EMC. When you use the software's “delete a volume” feature, the software marks the volume as hidden in its repository. These “hidden volumes” are stored in the “Free Device” list.

If you use a device in the “Free Device” list when you create a volume, that device is removed from the “Free Device” list. The device was moved from the list because it is now assigned.

LUN Provisioning Is Not Supported with Solutions Enabler 4.3

LUN mapping and LUN Masking works only when SYMAPI server version 5.0 or later is used. SYMAPI version 4.3 does not allow LUN provisioning, even though it shows existing LUNs. It also does not show existing LUN maskings.

“Process Has an Exclusive Lock” Message

You will receive a message resembling the one shown below if a process has already locked the EMC Symmetrix storage system and you attempt a process that requires a lock on the Symmetrix storage system. The Symmetrix storage system can become locked for many reasons. For example, the storage system becomes locked when it performs LUN mapping, LUN masking or Discovery Data Collection/Get Details. The Symmetrix storage system may also remain locked after a provisioning operation has failed.

“SYMAPI routine SymDevMaskSessionStart failed with error code 188: The operation failed because another process has an exclusive lock on the local Symmetrix.”

After the management server has detected the lock on the Symmetrix storage system, it tries to access the storage system for 15 minutes and logs the errors.

If you receive the error message, determine if someone is performing an operation that requires a lock, such as LUN mapping, LUN masking or Discovery Data Collection/Get Details. This also applies even if one of the processes is being used by a third-party product, such as for LUN masking. If so, wait until the process is complete. Only manually remove the lock if you are certain that no other processes are occurring on the storage system. To learn how to remove the lock, refer to the documentation for the Symmetrix storage system.

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