RDM Considerations and Limitations

Certain considerations and limitations exist when you use RDMs.

• The RDM is not available for direct-attached block devices or certain RAID devices. The RDM uses a SCSI serial number to identify the mapped device. Because block devices and some direct-attach RAID devices do not export serial numbers, they cannot be used with RDMs.
• If you are using the RDM in physical compatibility mode, you cannot use a snapshot with the disk. Physical compatibility mode allows the virtual machine to manage its own, storage-based, snapshot or mirroring operations.

  Virtual machine snapshots are available for RDMs with virtual compatibility mode.

• You cannot map to a disk partition. RDMs require the mapped device to be a whole LUN.
• If you use vMotion to migrate virtual machines with RDMs, make sure to maintain consistent LUN IDs for RDMs across all participating ESXi hosts.
• Flash Read Cache does not support RDMs in physical compatibility. Virtual compatibility RDMs are supported with Flash Read Cache.