Finding Raw Disk Mappings in your environment

Raw Disk Mappings are a pass through disk type that can be used with virtual machines. With an RDM, the logical disk is connected to the VM directly. Instead of being formatted as a VMFS volume, the logical disk is formatted with an OS filesystem. RDMs allow use cases such as sharing a cluster disk between a physical and virtual node in a cluster, or for taking an existing Logical Unit Number (LUN) of data and moving it from a physical host to a virtual machine. Some of the use cases are stop-gap uses that are employed during the transition from physical to virtual drives and this might require you to identify and convert RDMs in your environment. PowerCLI is an excellent way to identify virtual machines with RDMs attached.

Getting ready

To begin this recipe, you will need to open a PowerCLI window, connect to a vCenter server, and have a virtual machine with a Raw Disk Mapping. Many environments will not have virtual machines with an RDM, but...