Troubleshooting Block Storage for VPC

When you create or manage Block Storage for VPC, you might encounter issues. Often, you can recover by following a few steps. Issues, symptoms, likely causes, and resolutions are described in the following sections.

Cannot retrieve a volume in a specified region

Information about a Block Storage volume or volumes can't be retrieved for a region.

Any of the following causes might apply:

The volume name and information is missing in either the UI or CLI.
You might also be attempting to access a volume in a region other than your region.
You might be trying to access an obsolete volume that was created on a deprecated VPC infrastructure.

Verify that the volume wasn't detached from a virtual server instance and deleted. Search for the instance to which you last attached the volume from the list of all virtual server instances:

In the IBM Cloud console, click the Navigation menu icon > Infrastructure > Compute > Virtual server instances.
Select a virtual server instance from the list of all virtual servers.

If the volume is not attached as expected and does not appear in the list of volumes, it was probably deleted. Because deleting a volume completely removes its data, it cannot be restored.

If you use the CLI, verify that you entered the correct command syntax for viewing volumes. See Viewing all Block Storage volumes from the CLI. Verify that you specified the correct resource group or zone.

Cannot update a volume name by using the API or CLI

You receive an error message when you attempt to rename an existing volume.

This condition might appear in the API or CLI in the following scenarios.

In the API, when you send a PATCH request to rename the volume.
In the CLI, when you specify the ibmcloud is volume-update command.

You might be renaming the volume with an invalid volume name. In this case, you see a 400 - validation_invalid_name error. You might also be specifying a valid volume name, but one that is already in the VPC. For example, if you create two volumes from compute resources that are in the same account, the same region, and have the same name, you see a 400 - volume_name_duplicate error.

Note: The UI prevents you from entering an invalid volume name.

Follow these guidelines for valid volume names:

Volume names can include a combination of lowercase alpha-numeric characters (a-z, 0-9) and the hyphen (-), up to 63 characters.
Volume names must begin with a lowercase letter.
Volume names must be unique across a VPC region.

Cannot delete a volume by name or ID

You can't delete a Block Storage volume by name or ID.

The volume name and ID are not accepted.

Verify that the volume name or identifier is correct and that the volume is not attached to a virtual server instance. Also, verify that the volume is not in a pending state.

Expandable volume remains in an updating state when an attempt is made to delete an instance

When you attempt to delete a virtual server instance with an attached volume that is being resized, the volume remains in an updating state and can't be deleted.

A volume is being resized and you tried to delete the instance that the volume is attached to, either manually or by auto-delete. The status of the volume remains updating and the volume isn't deleted with the instance.

A volume must be in an available state for operations such as attach, detach, delete. When you are expanding a volume, wait for the volume resize to complete before you perform any operations. If you try to delete a volume that's resizing, the volume remains in an updating state and is not deleted with the instance. To delete the volume, reattach the volume to a different instance, and make sure that the resizing is complete (volume status becomes available), and then delete the volume.

Removing IAM authorization from the storage service to the KMS causes root key deregistration failure

The root keys in the Key management service (KMS) instance remain registered to the deleted Block Storage volume or image resources.

If you remove IAM authorization from Cloud Block Storage to the KMS before you delete all BYOK volumes or images, the root key fails to unregister from the resource.

As best practice, delete all storage or image resources before you remove IAM authorization. If you already removed authorization, you must restore the IAM authorization between Cloud Block Storage (source service) and your KMS (target service). For more information, see Using authorizations to grant access between services to establish IAM service-to-service authorizations in the UI, CLI, or API.

Resolving volume resize issues while a snapshot is taken

If you take a snapshot of a volume and increase the capacity of the source volume while the snapshot is being created, you get an error.

While the snapshot is in the pending state, a volume resize operation fails with the error messages The resize validation failed and volume is locked.

Wait until the snapshot is created and it is in an available state before you resize the source volume.