RDM on Local SATA Disk in ESXi4

RDM with local SATA disk is now working in ESXi with following steps:

- locate your target RDM disk using 'fdisk -l' or 'ls /vmfs/devices/disks'
- create .vmdk RDM file using 'vmkfstools -r /vmfs/devices/disks/... .vmdk'
- add above .vmdk RDM file to VM as existing disk

My main reason for doing this is to bypass VMFS to utilize benefit of Windows Home Server: disk is readable by standard windows machine.

LSI Driver for Windows Home Server on ESX

If WHS installer cannot detect virtual disk and complains about no hard drive to install:

- get LSI20320-R SCSI Driver for Windows 2003 Server from http://www.lsi.com/
- copy driver files to floppy image; I use existing VM on ESX to create a new image and copy
- mount the floppy image to WHS and select the scsi driver