Windows 2008 Vmware Vsphere additional disk issue

All virtual machine disk files (VMDKs) are presented to VMs as SAN disks and Windows 2008 changed how SAN disks were handled, in effect they are offline until you set them online. You will see the “Disk is Offline because policy was set by an administrator” message.

First you need to change how Windows 2008 sees the SAN devices, then you need to clear a readonly flag, then you are good to go. Using ‘diskpart’ enter the following commands

DISKPART> SAN POLICY=OnlineAll
DISKPART> RESCAN
DISKPART> SELECT DISK 1
DISKPART> ATTRIBUTES DISK CLEAR READONLY
DISKPART> ONLINE DISK
DISKPART> CONVERT MBR

Now you can use your normal mechanisms to add, format, etc. the disk into the system.

http://www.astroarch.com/blog/?tag=policy-set-by-administrator

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