6.5.1

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.
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