Convert Physical server with 4TB of storage to VM

[sejod2004]

        VmWare 4.1 with Vcenter

I am trying to wrap my head around how to convert a physical server (2008R2) to a VM. The server is a file server with 4 TB of storage on an IBM XIV SAN (Fibre).

I already take a full bare metal backup of the server using Windows backup and have successfully restored that backup in VMware but of course the 4 TB storage wasnt there.

My question is how to get the 4TB storage attached without destroying it?

This is what I am thinking.

     1. Restore baremetal backup in Vmware

     2. Create a Physical RDM pointing to the LUN of the 4TB storage holding all the file shares.

Would this work? Will VmWare want to format the RDM?

Does anyone have any ideas or have done something like this already?

[a_p_]

I'm afraid that won't work. RDMs larger than 2TB are only supported in physical (pass-through) mode with ESXi 5.0 or later, and a guest iSCSI initiator to access the LUN this way isn't an option with FC. VMware will support virtual disks with up to 62TB with vSphere 5.5 which was just announced though. If your hardware supports the new new version, this may be an option.

Btw. other options - like chaining virtual disks in Windows - is something I wouldn't do.

André