Mounting USB devices to VM through ESXi host

[darinzook]

Does anyone know how to mount a external USB hard drive to a VM through a physical port on the ESXi host? I am limited on space on my ESXi host, so I want to give file storage to a VM using a USB external hard drive. It has to be possible, but how do I do it?

I am using the new free release of ESXi on a HP ProLiant ML370.

[Jasemccarty · Accepted solution]

First off, I don't think that ESXi will support a USB drive.

You are better off using some network based storage, like NFS. NFS storage can be made available using something like FreeNAS or Openfiler. Both of these can be run on physical boxes, or on virtual machines on another host.

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

[darinzook]

Thats kind of a bummer. I was trying to get away from having multiple boxes setup. I was hoping I would just be able to add the USB device thats connected to the host to a VM and have my file storage. I like the idea of Openfiler and FreeNAS and have actually used FreeNAS in the past. But due to my space limitations on my host, it would have been nice.

I am assuming that it would be the same situation for an external drive attached via Firewire?

[Jasemccarty]

Most likely the same with any local (non "SCSI") attached storage.

Keep in mind, some SATA controllers "present" their drives to ESX/ESXi as SCSI.

You could buy one of the SATA controllers that others have had success with, and then add storage that way.

Dave? Where's that list again?

Jase McCarty

http://www.jasemccarty.com

Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center

(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

[Dave_Mishchenko]

http://www.vm-help.com/Whitebox_HCL.php

[jrenton]

You could consider using an ethernet attached USB hub. Belkin do an inexpensive version that works well. Just need an agent installed into your VM then you can plug and play USB device to your hearts content.

[darinzook]

I really like that idea... not a big fan of belkin... any ideas on speed? performance?

[jrenton]

The Belkin device is about half the price of the Digi alternative and has better functionality. With the Digi hub you can only assign USB devices to one client at any one time whilst the Belkin device can assign USB ports to multiple clients simultaneously.

The network speed is 10/100 RJ45 and the devices have USB2.0 connectivity.

It also looks good aswell. See: www.belkin.com/networkusbhub/

[darinzook]

thanks for everyone's help. I haven't really decided which route to take yet... but thanks again.

[nknatter]

hello all ! using a PCIe firewire controller & 3 disks: no luck. VMware does not recoginze them.

when i use the USB interface of them disks plus one Iomega USB DVD burner, VMware presents

4 USB controllers, but only the CDROM is usable. when re-scanning the other 3, it does not

detect them (after some 3 minutes). BIOS sees all 4 of them. boot of ESXi takes significantly

longer (abut 10 minutes) with lots of disk timeout errors on ALT-F12. Question: is there any

tweak to be applied in VMware kernel to ease access of USB harddrives ? the same drives

are smoothly recognized and accessed when native Fedora or Win2008 is installed on that

same machine (HP ML150G5). any ideas ? muchas gracias !

/nick