About VMware raw device mapping (RDM)

This topic applies to NetBackup for VMware.

VMware raw device mapping mode (RDM) allows a virtual machine to directly access physical disks. With raw device mapping, a VMware virtual machine can use large storage devices such as disk arrays. Access to the data on an RDM disk is faster than to a fully virtualized disk (vmdk file). An RDM disk can be locally attached to the ESX server or configured on a Fibre Channel SAN.

NetBackup supports the disk arrays that are configured on a virtual machine as RDMs.

For notes and restrictions on NetBackup support for VMware RDM, see the following Veritas tech note:

Support for NetBackup in virtual environments

http://www.veritas.com/docs/000006177