EVA4400 + ESX 3.5.0 + Windows 2003 Raw Device Mapping disks

[Maxitaly_1]

Hi all

On Spock site, looking for EVA4400 compatibility (EVA4400 VMware ESX Server 3.5x, 3i), I found this notes in section General Guest OS (1) Notes: "7). Raw Device Mapping is not supported on Windows 2003 Guest Operating System."

I'd like use EVA snapshot (BC) in a Windows 2003 (no R2) for backup.

In the VMware HCL I haven't found confirmation of this note.

1. anyone knows if the note concerns only W2K3 or even W2K3 R2 ?
2. "is there anybody out there" that uses this configuration ? I.e.: EVA4400 + W2K3 in ESX 3.5 + RDM + snapshot. Any problem ?

Many thanks and regards
Max

[Uwe Zessin]

Last year in December I've talked to one person who works in the group that does 'Customer Focused Testing'. He said he did a lot of RDM tests to verify the myth that an RDM is so much faster that VMFS/VMDK. All tests went without problems.

I've mentioned the note and he promised a clarification - well, the release notes for XCS 09006000 lifts it a bit:
""Raw Device Mapping is not supported with Windows 2003 Virtual Machine Guest Operating System and versions earlier than ESX 3.5.0.""

I don't think there is a general problem - the I/O still goes through the VMkernel - it is limited tested by the engineer who does the qualification.

[Maxitaly_1]

Thanks Uwe

Very precious information !
So it's seems that starting from 3.5.0 it's possible to use RDM.

Thanks
Max