My customer uses NetApp storage and VM's are predominantly stored on NFS data stores.
The customer uses a large number of MS SQL Servers which have SnapDrive and SMSQL on the SQL VM's. The different DB and Logs drives are mounted as iSCSI (physical mode) RDM's into the guest.
When I try to protect the VM's I get errors relating to the RDM drives being 'not-replicated' (all RDM disks are properly SnapMirrored).
The RDM pointer files are stored on a dedicated iSCSI data store, as we cannot store them on NFS data stores. Currently there are 20 VM's with RDM pointer files on the iSCSI data store.
If I SnapMirror the RDM Mapping LUN, the RDM disks can then be protected in the VM, however the RDM data store is added to the Protection Group along with the shared NFS data store and the actual RDM LUNs.
I could see how this could work in a complete DR event, however if I wanted to failover a subset of VM's the RDM data store (which contains RDM pointers for multiple VM's) would need to be failed over, and this would not be possible as VM's which are not being failed over would still be using this DS.
As I see it, I need either
1. Dedicated RDM iSCSI data store per VM (or group of VMs sharing a Protection Group)
2. Move the OS disks to an iSCSI data store and store the RDM's with the VM files
3. Do not use RDM's anymore and transition my RDM's to VMDK's and integrate SnapDrive / SMSQL with vCenter
This must be a fairly common occurrence as this implementation is pretty standard (vSphere 5.5 / SRM 5.5 on NetApp ONTAP 8.2.1)
Has anyone got experience of either of the above 3 options and which works best?
Thanks