Host Based SAN Recovery fails with error writing to Virtual Disk

Problem:

Log messages like that found in Figure 1 are logged when performing Host based restore that attempts to use the SAN Transport Mode:

Figure. Log messages from a failed HBB VMware restore attempting to use SAN transport

The attachment from log message 10150:

VixDiskLib: Detected DiskLib error 4096062 (One of the 
parameters supplied is invalid). VixDiskLib: VixDiskLib_Write: 
Write 2048 sectors to disk at 0 failed. Error 16000 (One of the 
parameters supplied is invalid) (DiskLib error 4096062: One of 
the parameters supplied is invalid) at 8019.

The attachment from log message 13520:

Virtual Disk:Hard disk 1 Virtual Machine:<VM_NAME> Host: 
<VMWARE_NODE> vddk error: Failed to write virtual disk data to 
host system.

Solution:

The above errors are seen because VMware has selected the SAN transport method as the proxy and target datastore are both on the same SAN. However, the Proxy OS does not have write access to the VMFS volume. Ensure that the VMFS volume is exposed but not mounted, and has both read and write access.

In Windows this can be achieved by the diskpart CLI tools as described below:

list disk will display all disks (as shown by the disk management app.

select disk is used to select a disk for further inspection/modification

detail disk is used to display information about the currently selected disk

attribute disk clear readonly is used to clear the disk's 'read-only' attribute

Figure. Diskpart CLI tool

[root@LinuxHost ~]# lsblk -o NAME,FSTYPE,RO
NAME                    FSTYPE                    RO
sdb                                                0
└─sdb1                  VMFS_volume_member         0

[root@LinuxHost ~]# lsblk -o NAME,FSTYPE,MODE
NAME                    FSTYPE             MODE
sdb                                        brw-rw----
└─sdb1                  VMFS_volume_member brw-rw----