Understand SCSI, SCSI command responses and sense codes

During troubleshooting VMware vSphere and storage related issues it is quite useful to understand SCSI command responses and sense codes.

Usually you can see in log something like "failed H:0x8 D:0x0 P:0x0 Possible sense data: 0xA 0xB 0xC"

H: means host codes
D: means device codes
P: means plugin codes
A: is Sense Key
B: is Additional Sense Code
C: is Additional Sense Code Qualifier

Some host codes:
0x2 Bus state busy

0x3 Timeout for other reason

0x5 Told to abort for some other reason

0x8 Bus reset

Some device codes:
00h  GOOD
02h  CHECK CONDITION
04h  CONDITION MET
08h  BUSY
18h  RESERVATION CONFLICT
28h  TASK SET FULL
30h  ACA ACTIVE
40h  TASK ABORTED

Some plugin codes:
00h  No error.
01h  An unspecified error occurred. Note: The I/O cmd should be tried.
02h  The device is a deactivated snapshot. Note: The I/O cmd failed because the device is a deactivated snapshot and so the LUN is read-only.
03h  SCSI-2 reservation was lost.
04h  The plug-in wants to requeue the I/O back. Note: The I/O will be retried.
05h  The test and set data in the ATS request returned false for equality.
06h  Allocating more thin provision space. Device server is in the process of allocating more space in the backing pool for a thin provisioned LUN.
07h  Thin provisioning soft-limit exceeded.
08h  Backing pool for thin provisioned LUN is out of space.

Some SCSI Sense Keys:
SCSI Sense Keys appear in the Sense Data available when a command returns with a CHECK CONDITION status. The sense key contains all the information necessary to understand why the command has failed.

Code Name
0h   NO SENSE
1h   RECOVERED ERROR
2h   NOT READY
3h   MEDIUM ERROR
4h   HARDWARE ERROR
5h   ILLEGAL REQUEST
6h   UNIT ATTENTION
7h   DATA PROTECT
8h   BLANK CHECK
9h   VENDOR SPECIFIC
Ah   COPY ABORTED
Bh   ABORTED COMMAND
Dh   VOLUME OVERFLOW
Eh   MISCOMPARE

There is VMware KB with further details here.

It is worth to read following documents
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/khg/HyperNews/get/devices/scsi.html (this is quite old document for programmers willing to write SCSI driver)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI_contingent_allegiance_condition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI_Request_Sense_Command

What is SCSI reservation
http://mrwhatis.com/scsi-reservation.html

SCSI-3 Persistent Group Reservation
http://scsi3pr.blogspot.cz/