P2V Exchange 2007 and RDM?

[Odurasler2]

All,

Our environment consist of a Windows 2003 with Exchange 2007. This server is currently a physical server that has 2 LUNs on a SAN. Our ESX farm currently has connections to this SAN.

My question is this:

Could we P2V just the OS (any direct attached partitions on the server) and use RDM to link back to those 2 LUNS on the SAN? It seems simple enough, but i think i missing a step here.

Unfortunately, we can not P2V the whole disk drives because of space issues.

Has anyone tried this before and is so what are the gotchas?

[kjb007]

Yes, during the conversion, you can choose to not select the data drives, and perform the conversion of just the OS.

-KjB

[ajtinis]

If I remeber correctly you can depending on the SAN you have. With the IBM SAN I was able to install an application that allowed me to do that. Honestly I would rather bring up a new Exchange environment in VMware using RDM to new disks rather than P2V and then try to attach to a SAN volume. Then just migrate the users to the new Exchange server.

[Odurasler2]

Thanks to the replies so far.

Yup, I'm well aware of being able to P2V just certain drives during the P2V process. I'm just not sure the in/outs when re-attaching the NTFS LUNs within the ESX environment.

We're using a Clariion CX3-40. Keep in mind that we're limited to disk space so creating a whole new Exchange with new RDMs might be difficult.

[kjb007]

The problem may come when you boot for the first time. If you're using a cluster, then this can cause a shift of the SCSI id's, and you may have issues until you get the disk problems sorted out. It's usually better in that case to create a new cluster member after the vm is up and running and can already see the drives.

Since you didn't mention cluster, I'll assume you don't have one. What you may notice is that Exchange may have an issue or two, for the same reason. But, after your drives are mapped and are configured with the same path as before, you should be good to go.

-KjB