smartctl and Hyper-V

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 1
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 3
Microsoft Hyper-V

Situation

When using smartctl on systems running SLES10 SP3 or SLES11 GA with the Linux Integration Services V2.1 or SLES11 SP1 as a guest on Microsoft Hyper-V with the already included Hyper-V storage drivers the following message can be found in /var/log/messages:

STORVSC_DRV: CHS (65535, 16, 255)
storvsc: Current: sense key: Illegal Request
Additional sense: Invalid command operation code

Resolution

smartctl was designed and written with real hardware in mind. It uses facilities built into the storage drivers to determine the state of the hard drive. Many drivers for virtualized hardware among them the Hyper-V storage drivers don't provide the facilities to allow smartctl to get information from that hard drive, because the information would be random or static and therefore of no use. This is the reason why smartcl should not be used in a virtualized environment like Hyper-V.

Additional Information

Disclaimer

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