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eammonc
Contributor
Contributor

LUNs from physical server to VM

We have had a physical server here crash hard and after trying to recover it have decided to virtualize. I have some questions though. This server has a couple of dozen LUNs attached to it which we would like to connect to the VM. If I understand correctly, I can add the LUNs as independent disks by presenting them to the ESX host and then adding them to the VM. If I do this, will the VM be able to read the Logical disk information without destroying the data contained on these disks? My biggest concern is that there are only a handful of actual logical volumes that these LUNs support, far fewer than the LUN count. If we destroy data and have to recover from tape the process may take days. This is the quickest way I can think of to do this but we've never attempted it before.

Thanks,

Eammon

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Chamon
Commander
Commander

Have you looked into adding the LUNs after you virtualize the server (only the OS drive) then attaching the VMs to the LUNs with RDM?

eammonc
Contributor
Contributor

That's more or less what we're doing, we had to build the OS from a template though, the source system is too far gone to virtualize. How many luns can I add through RDM? It looks like I can only add 16 to the vm as it sits now.

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Chamon
Commander
Commander

That sounds right but I would have to look it up in the MAX doc. Does it say 16 LUNs or targets? How many LUNS do you have and it sounds like you have extents created accross the LUNs.

eammonc
Contributor
Contributor

There are 32 LUNs to be added to the VM with extents across multiple LUNs as you guessed. This day just keeps getting better...I don't think we're going to be able to pull this off this way. Back to the drawing board, hopefully my co-workers on the phone with Microsoft are having more luck.

Thanks for the help Chamon.

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Chamon
Commander
Commander

It would have to be tested but can you pull some of the LUNs in to VMDKs during the P2V? I don't know if that is possible but it might be worth looking into? Or creat the drives after the P2V and migrate the date at that point. How larg are they?

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Rubeck
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

If you add a second SCSI Controller to the VM, wouldn't that allow you to add more than 16 LUNs? I sure hope so...

/Rubeck

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