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How do I switch off Software RAID on CentOS

I have a CentOS sserver running 4.7 of the CentOS distribution. I need to virtualise it into my VMWare ESXi host but I cannot do this, because the machine is configured with a software RAID - which VMWare cannot handle.

Is there any way to disable the RAID for the conversion to virtual machine without destroying the data on the hard disk?

Any help appreciated!

noci

Why can't VMware ware handle this?, it would be better to solve it on the host i agree, but it should be possible to do it from a virtual system. Software raid is not handles by VMware but by the linux OS.

Any way. Assuming it is a raid 1 (otherwise you cannot break the RAID...)
Start with failing one member of the raid 1 set. (f.e. consistently break al hda partition

mdadm /dev/md/2 -f /dev/hdb2 (if md/2 is mapped to hda2 & hdb2 f.e.)

then change all the partition types of the remain member to 82 & 83 depending on use (ext/swap)
Adjust your /etc/fstab to handle the right partitions and reboot....; check the kernel commandline during boot for raid options
Now your system should run from the raw partitions.
You might have some trouble if /etc/fstab is not the only place where raid partitionas are handled.

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Mysidia

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Chris Kenward

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Thank you for your help on this one!