NVMe drive label changes after reboot

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15

Situation

After installation of SLES 15, NVMe drive labels are changing after each reboot. For example, nvme0n1 could be an NVMe Drive with 800GB capacity and nvme1n1 is another NVMe drive with 1.6TB capacity in one instance of boot. When the system is rebooted, nvme0n1 could be drive with 1.6TB Capacity and nvme1n1 could be drive with 800GB capacity.

Steps to reproduce:

1- Attach 3-4 NVMe drives to the server.

2- Install and boot into os.

3- Check Major and Minor numbers of NVMe devices and note them to compare with the next reboot instance.

4- Reboot the server and compare Major and Minor numbers to previous boot.

5- Repeat step-4 for 4-5 times and observe the device label change.

Note: This behavior was not seen in SLES 12 SP3.

Resolution

This is the expected behavior for SLE 15 even though it is different from SLES 12 SP3. The device label can get changed on reboots and there is no relation between NVMe controller numbering and NVMe block device numbering.

As an alternative, using UUIDs is recommended in the Storage Administrator Guide as well, see: https://www.suse.com/documentation/sles-12/singlehtml/stor_admin/stor_admin.html#cha.uuid

Disclaimer

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