Ridiculous question about storage

[tiger74]

Hi all,

I hope my question is not "too stupid" to be asked.

Using ESX 3.5 and VC 2.5. Guests are w2k3.

From the docs I read, ESX can recognize SAN through the host's hba to be used as Datastore (thus be formatted with VFS).

What I'm confused is: What if I have SAN that I don't want to be use as Datastore for the host? I mean, the SAN has already data in it, and I just want the guests to be able to "connect" to it as ordinary OS - SAN behaviour.

Is it possible? What is the right way to do it?

Thank you.

[Gerrit_Lehr]

That is not possible. You can not present a SAN LUN directly to a VM since you can not emulate a FC HBA. But since 3.5 you can use NPIV for a VM to present an RDM on the SAN and get a WWN for the VM. But this still runs through the ESX Server.

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

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[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

What you are referring to in vmware speak is accessing a Raw Lun - to do this you will need to take advantage of an Raw Device Mapping which is a special VMDK file that will redirect the writes to these Raw Luns - check out section 8 of

[Berniebgf]

Don't you love IT.

Both Answers Correct but completely different subjects. It all comes down to how we interpret the request.

Anyway.... Helps with my post count

Bernie

http://sanmelody.blogspot.com

[tiger74]

Yes, thank you for all wonderful contributor in the forum. I hope I'd be able to help others too soon.