I have a PC running ESXi 6.7, managed by vcenter running on a different server. This PC has 1 SSD for local vfms 6 datastore, and 9 HDD's mapped thru RDM and used in two VMs. This setup has being working for several years since ESXi 5.5, 6.0, and last year upgraded to 6.7.
But today, when I was doing some VM management, when I shutdown, removed the RDM HDD, and later tried to added it back, it failed with error "Incompatible device backing specified for device 0". I just cannot add the RDM disk back to the VM. At this time, the other VM with the 8 RDM HDD's is still running fine. Then I stopped that VM, and check the settings, again, the RDM disks for that VM is showing in red error as well. Now none of the RDM HDD's is working for me.
I originally used the vmkfstools -z command to create the RDM vmdk in a common @RDM subfolder in the local SSD vmfs datastore. Now I cannot rm these vmdk files. When I tried to create these RDM vmdk files in a different @RDM2 subfolder, I get the following error:
[root@... ... .../@RDM2] vmkfstools -z t10.ATA_____ST32000542AS_____________________
___________________5XW0XR9N ST32000542AS_5XW0XR9N.vmdk
Raw device, '/vmfs/volumes/5c5c96da-3ffa9809-d5cd-bc5ff4d4f02c/@RDM2/t10.ATA_____ST32000542AS________________________________________5XW0XR9N' doesn't exist, or isn't a disk.
Now I even reinstalled the ESXi to the latest 6.7 20190104001, but the problem is same.
I searched on the web and cannot find any answers. Anyone can help me with this? Thanks.