ESX 3.5 and USB Hard Drive

[j_hedman]

Hi All,

well, I've searched the web and found very little to help me so here I am creating a post. I have a test installation of ESX 3.5 and I'm trying to add an external USB drive to a VM running on the host. The external drive has 2TB of space and I'm testing some voice recording software so I really need the 2TB of space (which this test host doesn't have on the SAN). Is there anyway to attach the external USB drive to the host and thus the guest? there's got to be a way... Can anyone please enlighten me? I'd really appreciate it...

Thanks!

[Solfoit1]

Hello,

USB is not supported by the VMware Kernel. So you won't be able to mount the usb harddrive to any of the running virutal machines.

With kind regards,

Ruud

[mcowger]

Best way to do this wouldbe to attach that drive to some (non virtual) server and share it out via some method (CIFS, iSCSI, NFS, etc)

--Matt

[j_hedman]

Any idea if ESX3.5 will support the use of a PCI-E esata controller to an external esata drive enclosure? Are there supported esata cards? I don't want to use the drive as a vmfs volume, simply leave it as a ntfs drive connected to a single vm.

[Solfoit1]

Hello,

You have to look on the HCL for any supported sata controller cards. But still then you have to create a vmfs volume on the disk before you can create an additional disk for a virtual machine.

Or you have to place the disk in an server and configure iscsi or nfs on that server. Another option is to place the disk in a storage device that support nfs over tcp (version 3) like the readynas NV+ does or the Linksys SDD4000/SDD6000

With kind regards

Ruud

[j_hedman]

Thanks, I think the external NAS device is the best option at this point. Now to just find one at a good price... Thanks everyone, sure wish the kernel supported USB, not as something permanent, but it gives users a good option.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

If the SATA device is listed on the VMware HCL and there are external ports on the device then it will work. YOu do not need to format a VMFS for the VM to see this. You can use a RAW device through the SCSI Generic interface to add the external device to a VM. Somewhat tricky to do but possible. This is they way you get RDM like capability when you have no iSCSI/SAN storage.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354, As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[kjb007]

If you do decide on external NAS devices, make sure it supports NFS, and not just CIFS/SMB, if you want ESX to use it directly. CIFS/SMB can not be used with the host as a datastore, although you can map to it from a vm. It's up to you what you want to do though.

Good luck.

-KjB

[mejason69]

I have a very similar problem. I have an esata drive connected and showing up on the host. I do not want to reformat to vmfs, I want to keep it ext3 and mount it to a linux guest directly.

Anyone know if this possible in esxi 4? I have tested and you can do this on Vmware Server 2, but I would much rather have the ESXi instead of a Vmware server running on top of a linux install.

Thanks

[Texiwill]

Hello,

This was possible using ESX 3.5 and the same should hold true for ESX 4. Check out: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/virtualization-pro/vmware-esx-storage-how-to-get-local-sto...

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009, Virtualization Practice Analyst[/url]
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[mejason69]

Thanks for the link, I was present the same link on another thread.

Sounds as tho I may have issues with moveing the drive around if needed. I will do some heavy testiing before implementing thanks again.