Re-Assign RDM of an inaccessible VM

[pinkerton]

Hi,

we have an Exchange Server 2010 VM that is regularly backed up and replicated using Veeam Backup & Replication. The VM consists of one virtual hard disk with the system partition of the guest operating system and one physical RAW device mapping to a LUN with the Exchange databases/logs on it.

I've just performed a test what happens if the storage that hosts the VM files goes down. In this case I usually would want to use a backup or replica of he VM, re-attach the RDM (that is hosted on a different storage system) and go to production again.

However, after I have simulated a storage failure, the VM changes its state to "inaccessible" and I can't change it's configuration anymore (which is quite logical I think). The problem here is: I cannot re-assign the RDM with the databases on it to the backup/replica VM as it is still tied to the failed VM!

Is there a way to remove the RDM from the failed/inaccessible VM and attach it to a different one (the replica in my case)?

Thanks,
Michael

[vmroyale]

You might be able to use the "config.vpxd.filter.rdmFilter; false" settings outlined in http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010513

It sounds like you are just testing, but definitely proceed with caution here.

[pinkerton]

Thanks! That showed all RDMs of still-accessible VMs. However, I got it working by just removing the inaccessible VM from the inventory. After that I was able to choose the RDM, even with the LUN filtering being still active.

So solution is: Just remove VM from inventory.