vmware issue

[kunjuttan]

hi gurus,
i am facing a problem in my HP-EVA8400 storage.I am having a server running windows 2003 server os.And around 700GB space is mapped to my storage.now we have to move this server to a vmware.Now my question is how to map this 700GB space in vmware.

thx
rgds
kunju

[Uwe Zessin]

If you don't want to move the data into a VMDK on a VMFS, why not map the virtual disk to the ESX server and set up a Raw Device Mapping (RDM)?

That way you can even 'flip back' to the physical server. Make sure only one of them has access to the disk at a time, though!

[kunjuttan]

yep..this is what I am asking for.but I dont know how to do that.pls give me the steps...

[Jan Soska]

Hello,
here are steps:
1. install server in Vmware
2. present Eva storage to ESX server/servers
3. rescan FC HBA's on you ESX/ESX's
4. DO NOT create vmfs storage on newly detected volume!
5. POWER OFF your virtual server
6. go to Edit setting in your VM, clik Add disk, click Raw device mapping disk, select it from the list, confirm setting.
7. Power on you VM.
8. Enjoy your old disk in new virtual enviroment. :)


Jan

[kunjuttan]

thanx..
i have 2 more doubts,
1)Is anything is to be done from the storage size apart from presenting the LUN to the ESX host?
2)My data will be intact.r8???

[Uwe Zessin]

1. No, that's it. What I do is, I use different 'ranges' of LUN addresses to have it easier to tell a virtual disk that is used for a VMFS data store from an RDM.

E.g. addresses 1..19 are used for VMFS.
Addresses 20..39 are used for RDMs.

2. The data is not touched, but be careful with tools like FDISK, DD, ... and never use the "Add Storage" on an RDM disk - many people are confused by this, but it is only used to create a new VMFS datastore.

That's why I recommend using different address ranges for LUN addresses.