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riahc3
Contributor
Contributor

Why doesn't ESXi 5.5 support RDM?

Is there a reason why ESXi 5.5 does not support RDM? A lot of people ask for it and use it so I have no idea why VMWare doesnt work on this feature to implement it and support it natively, at least from a software point of view

Thank you

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TomHowarth
Leadership
Leadership

Just because "several N54L owners" have got it to work, does not mean that the controller is supported.  The Controller is not on the HCL this means one of two things:

  1. the Vendor has not taken the controller through VMware's compatibility tests to prove that it functions correctly or
  2. the controller has failed the compatibility tests for some reason.

What you are doing is not a normal use case.  With local disks there is usually no requirement for a RDM,

in fact there few use cases for RDMs left:

  1. MSCS
  2. direct access for management purposes (example Solution Enabler for EMC arrays)

I am assuming that as you are using a HP Micro Server this is not a production environment but your home lab.

Tom Howarth VCP / VCAP / vExpert
VMware Communities User Moderator
Blog: http://www.planetvm.net
Contributing author on VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment
Contributing author on VCP VMware Certified Professional on VSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410
TomHowarth
Leadership
Leadership

You have answered your own question, it seems that according to the KB your controller must lack the required functionality to support this feature.

Tom Howarth VCP / VCAP / vExpert
VMware Communities User Moderator
Blog: http://www.planetvm.net
Contributing author on VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment
Contributing author on VCP VMware Certified Professional on VSphere 4 Study Guide: Exam VCP-410
riahc3
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi 6.0 seems to have fixed this issue.

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