Hello
I'm setting up a Filer VM and for the data disk(s) (which I will never need to snapshot etc) I'm trying to pass through a locally attached SAS raw disk to the VM using RDM. I have just upgraded to ESXi 4.1U1 and was hoping the Advanced Settings->RdmFilter.HbaIsShared was going to be the answer...
Steps:
1) I have a free device (vmhba1:C0:T1:L0) that, if I went into "Add Storage" I could put a vmfs filesystem on. In case it is important, this previously was used for vmfs, though that Datastore was deleted.
2) When I first went into Advanced Settings->RdmFilter.HbaIsShared it was ticked. I unticked it (though I've actually tried both ticked and unticked)
3) I did Storage "Rescan All..."
4) When I try to add a disk to a VM the "Raw Device Mappings" radio button is greyed out - I was hoping I was going to be able to add a raw disk for vmhba1:C0:T1:L0 to a VM.
Am I missing something (e.g. some kind of extra line in hostd/config.xml to tell it to treat local storage like a SAN), or this just not actually possible yet? (e.g. KB article 1017704 suggests it's greyed out if "You are using a SAS Direct Attached Storage (DAS) Array that is being represented as Local Storage")
Notes:
- we are talking about local storage, not SAN storage (unlike this SAN question: http://communities.vmware.com/message/1666865, though the very last, slightly cryptic post, is intriguing!)
- this is the free ESXi version so I'm using vSphere Client (not Server)
Thanks!
Simon