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Ivanildo_GalvÃ_
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

VM Windows Server access FC storage LUN directly.

Hello friends,

I have a LUN in FC HPE storage, where a 2TB Datastore was created, there are several virtual machines stored.

I need a virtual machine with Windows Server to access this LUN, in order to carry out a job in an attempt to recover some vmdk files, it's okay if the LUN appears in Windows Disk Management as an invalid or unformatted volume, the important thing is that it really is available.

Is it possible to do that ?

Thanks !

Ivanildo Galvão
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IRIX201110141
Champion
Champion

Yes you can to that. As you mentioned.... dont initialize the disk within the windows disk management.

If you use Backup from SAN with Veeam/vRanger/$others the windows based backup machine also needs access to the LUNs. So your request is not unusal... but again... keep care!

Question: With which windows tool you would "read" the VMFS?  I iam only aware of linux  based stuff or just using the simple "dd".

Regards,

Joerg

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scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Yes, that would be a Raw Device Mapping: Add an RDM Disk to a Virtual Machine


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Ivanildo_GalvÃ_
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

The case is as follows:

The IT Analyst of the company where this VMware environment is working, made the serious mistake of reverting the snapshot of a Windows Server VM, which is the File Server, the VM returned to the state of the year 2018, so all the files on the drive D:\ have been lost, there are many files, with practically the entire history of the company.

I told them right away that this could only be solved by restoring the backup of the virtual machine, which is what VMware recommends, but they also made the mistake of not having a backup of the VM, unfortunately.

So a company was hired, specialized in data recovery, it wants to try to recover the snapshot's vmdk_delta, for that it has to do a general scan in the LUN where the Datastore is mounted, but this LUN has to be presented to a Windows Server VM, because all the tools that the company will use, only run on Windows.

It is !

But as the VM will see the LUN, would you need to configure the HBA of the ESXi host connected to the FC storage on that VM?
NPIV?

Ivanildo Galvão
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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

> Question: With which windows tool you would "read" the VMFS?  I iam only aware of linux  based stuff or just using the simple "dd".
At the moment there are only 2 commercial tools that can read VMFS worth mentioning: Diskinternals VMFS Recovery and UFSexplorer.
Both tools have a trial version.
Sometimes Diskinternals works better, sometimes UFSexplorer has better results.


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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