Creating a Physical Compatibility Mode Raw Device Mapping

Use the vmkfstools command to map a pass-through raw device to a file on a VMFS volume. With the mapping, a virtual machine can bypass ESXi SCSI command filtering when accessing its virtual disk. This type of mapping is useful when the virtual machine must send proprietary SCSI commands, for example, when SAN-aware software runs on the virtual machine.

-z|--createrdmpassthru device example.vmdk

After you establish this type of mapping, you can use it to access the raw disk as you access any other VMFS virtual disk.

When specifying the device path, use the following format:

/vmfs/devices/disks/device_ID 

For the .vmdk name, use this format. Make sure to create the datastore before using the command.

/vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/example.vmdk 

For example,

vmkfstools -z /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600a0000000000000... /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/mydisk.vmdk