Hello,
Does anyone know how you can go about changing the SCSI device classification ESX assigns to a local device? i.e. if VMware labels it as a disk, is there a way (NMP rule?) to classify it as a generic scsi device?
I ask, because of a long standing question from many people I have seen, that after several days, I cannot find a way to resolve: RD1000 mapping into a guest VM. ESX see's the RD1000, and I can create a datastore on it, create a vdisk then attach to a VM, however the issue is that it is slow... painfully slow (less than 1 mb/s transfer). My issue is that the RD1000 isn't a disk... it's an enclosure that holds disks. Therefore I feel that if it was identified as a SCSI device rather than a disk, I could map it, as a scsi device, directly to the guest VM and it would operate normally, just as I can with the ATA CDROM drive on the same controller. VMware supports says no dice on any of this, but even if technically unsupported, I am willing to try anything to get this working, as this is the only feasbile backup solution I have for remote sites.
To rule out hardware, I had installed windows directly on the host (spare drive) then tried data transfers to/from the RD1000 with 95MBs/avg transfer speeds. Clearly this is a driver/NMP issue in VMware, as hardware works end to end.
Things I have tried that don't work:
- Manually create RDM against device using vmfsktools..results in VM locking up and device manager freaking out; got it to work once.. with same slow transfer. Tried lsilogic & pvscsi adapters.
- Editing vmx file to manually define SCSI device... results in VM not powering up.. because ESX thinks it's a disk.
- DirectPath/HW Passthrough.. vmhba33 (sata port RD is connected to) doesn't even show up in list, however vmhba0 does (CDROM port). No combo of disabling CD rom port, moving physical ports around, etc. changes this, most likely b/c ESX think's it's a disk I am thinking
I am about at my wits end on this one, so ANY help is much appreciated!!!
