Raw disks in VMWare ESXi

If you want to do raw disk pass-through on ESXi, it’s pretty straightforward, even if it’s not in the console.

I’ve seen this elsewhere but I’m putting it here for posterity.

Find your disk identifier by looking in /dev/disks

ls /dev/disks/ -l

Then, use vmkfstools to make a pass-through vmdk file (this example uses a lsilogic adapter):

vmkfstools -r /vmfs/devices/disks/[device_id] RDM1.vmdk -a lsilogic

“Original content here”:http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/SATA_RDMs.php