6.0.1

Procedure
1 Right-click a virtual machine in the inventory and select Edit Settings.
2 (Optional) To delete the existing hard disk, move your cursor over the disk and click the Remove icon.
The disk is removed from the virtual machine. If other virtual machines share the disk, the disk files are
not deleted.
3 On the Virtual Hardware tab, select RDM Disk from the New device drop-down menu and click Add.
4 Select the target LUN for the raw device mapping and click OK.
The disk appears in the virtual device list.
5 Select the location for the mapping file.
n
To store the mapping file with the virtual machine configuration file, select Store with the virtual
machine.
n
To select a location for the mapping file, select Browse and select the datastore location for the disk.
6 Select a compatibility mode.
Option Description
Physical
Allows the guest operating system to access the hardware directly.
Physical compatibility is useful if you are using SAN-aware applications
on the virtual machine. However, a virtual machine with a physical
compatibility RDM cannot be cloned, made into a template, or migrated if
the migration involves copying the disk.
Virtual
Allows the RDM to behave as if it were a virtual disk, so that you can use
such features as taking snapshots, cloning, and so on. When you clone the
disk or make a template out of it, the contents of the LUN are copied into
a .vmdk virtual disk file. When you migrate a virtual compatibility mode
RDM, you can migrate the mapping file or copy the contents of the LUN
into a virtual disk.
7 Accept the default or select a different virtual device node.
In most cases, you can accept the default device node. For a hard disk, a nondefault device node is
useful to control the boot order or to have different SCSI controller types. For example, you might want
to boot from an LSI Logic controller and share a data disk with another virtual machine using a
BusLogic controller with bus sharing turned on.
8 (Optional) If you selected virtual compatibility mode, select a disk mode to change the way that disks
are affected by snapshots.
Disk modes are not available for RDM disks using physical compatibility mode.
Option Description
Dependent
Dependent disks are included in snapshots.
Independent - Persistent
Disks in persistent mode behave like conventional disks on your physical
computer. All data written to a disk in persistent mode are written
permanently to the disk.
Independent - Nonpersistent
Changes to disks in nonpersistent mode are discarded when you power off
or reset the virtual machine. With nonpersistent mode, you can restart the
virtual machine with a virtual disk in the same state every time. Changes
to the disk are written to and read from a redo log file that is deleted when
you power off or reset.
9 Click OK.
vSphere Virtual Machine Administration
122 VMware, Inc.