Virtual Machine RDM + Windows Server 2008 R2

[Justin_Farrow]

Hi All,

My client is currently going through a hardware installation and ESX upgrade. They currently have the following configuration

3 x ESX 4.0 Hosts

1 x Server 2008 R2 Management Server (vCenter)

1 x 4 TB SAN (Fibre)

They wish to create a VM for a file server (let's call it vFileServer) and then add a vDisk via RDM that shall connect to a 700 GB NTFS LUN on the SAN. Then also present this LUN to the vCenter server and directly access from here for file level backups to tape. The installation and configuration of the solution has worked without a hitch however they have now gone live on the new VM vFileServer but the data is not updating on the vCenter Server disk.

When I reboot the vCenter server it performs a ChkDsk process on the LUN and then updates.

Can anyone point me to the solution on how to have this data refresh immediately? I did perform some tests from the vCenter server and the data appeared to update on the VM successfully but it only appears to be working 1 way.

Thanks in advance.

[sketchy00 · Accepted solution]

On that "vFileServer" VM, have that RAW NTFS LUN presented and available to it. Then create a share for other server(s) to access the data on that LUN. That would be the way to present this data to the other server. Any "clustering" using RDM would only be available via MSCS

[Justin_Farrow]

Thanks for the response. That would work and I agree on MSCS. What I was really hoping for was perhaps someone had come across a 3rd part app that was cluster aware that could control the process. Looks like that isn't the case.

I have discovered that the we can use snap shotting off the SAN management app in order to clone the required LUN and then present the cloned LUN to the 2nd system and work it this way. This may be the solution but it shall cost the client.