VADP Recovery Error “media is write protected.” OR “Error Writing to VMDK: 0 bytes written intstead of”

Recovery of a VM using SAN or hotadd transport mode on Windows 2008

When using SAN transport or HotAdd mode on a Windows Server 2008 proxy, make sure to set the Windows SAN policy to onlineAll, otherwise writes produce the error messages “media is write protected.” OR “Error Writing to VMDK: 0 bytes written intstead of”

Perform the following one-time configuration on the proxy host before initiating the recovery:

1. Open a command prompt on the proxy host.

2. Run the following command:

DISKPART

3. Enter SAN and check for the SAN policy.

4. If the policy indicates offline, enable the policy by entering the following:

SAN POLICY=OnlineALL

You can now initiate the VM recovery using san or hotadd mode.

Note 1: If recovery is initiated from a Windows machine other than the proxy, these steps need to be performed on the machine where the recovery is initiated.

 Note 2: For image recovery via SAN mode, ensure that the VADP proxy has read-write access to the SAN LUNs hosting the virtual machines. To ensure read-write access, add the VADP proxy to the same fabric zones to which the ESX server system belongs.