Lun Migration from Esxi host to a Physical Server without formatting

[swaheed1239]

Hello Everyone.

We have an Esxi host to which a LUN is mounted from EMC. That LUN is further mounted to a VM which is a database server as VMDK not RDM.

However, we need to migrate that LUN from the Esxi host to a Windows server 2008 R2 which is installed on a Physical Box.

My Questions: How do we convert the VMDK so that it becomes compatible with the windows server on a Physical Box? Are there any other challenges that we might come across while migrating this LUN from Esxi to a Physical Box?

Can I just backup the data from that VMDK and then unmount the LUN and write that data back on to that LUN after mounting it on the Physical Box?

Any help and suggestions in this regards would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

[hussainbte]

if the disk is not RDM you will have to map a new LUN to the physical server and copy the data.

another option is you can assign a new LUN to vSphere..

convert the vmdk to the LUN by keeping it an RDM.

unmap the RDM lun from vSphere and map it to the windows server.

Its not something that I have done before but should work

this KB will help.

VMware Knowledge Base

[swaheed1239]

Thanks for your reply sir.

But could you please explain me what do you mean by 'convert the vmdk to the LUN by keeping it an RDM'. Do you want me to convert the existing LUN to RDM or what exactly?

Your help is much appreciated.

[admin]

you can see below blog for this reference. Hope it will help you .

Convert a VMware VMDK to an RDM - TechRepublic

Regards,

Randhir

[hussainbte]

as you know we can clone a vmdk to another vmdk.

similarly we can clone a vmdk to a RDM LLUN in a physical compatibility mode.

that way all the data on the vmdk file placed on the vmfs datastore will be written to the RAW device LUN.

that RAW LUN aka RDM  can then be assigned to your physical server

[hussainbte]

the blog shared by ranchuab​ is helpful along with the KB.

[swaheed1239]

Can't we convert that LUN which has VMDK itself to the RDM. This is because I can't accommodate a new LUN in the SAN.

Please advise if that will work or not.

Thanks.

[Finikiez]

You can't covert VMFS datastore with virtual disk into anything else.

If you have a backup software you can install backup agent into VM, backup all data from guest OS by network, reformat your LUN, attach it to any server and restore your data.