Start a VM from an external HD

[m4biz]

Hi.

I'd like to know if, for testing purpose - is it possible to start a VM from an external HD.

In other words, I've copied all VM's file on an external HD (a full VM's backup when the VM was in OFF state), and than I'd like to test if - in a disaster recovery case - I'll use this files to restore and restart the VM.

Thanks in advance.

[hussainbte]

If you have all the necessary files downloaded on the drive and they are valid, you can just access the drive from your client machine(windows) and upload the files to a vmfs datastore in a seperate folder.

these files can then be used to register the VM to the esx hosts and if all the files are valid, it should work

[SureshKumarMuth]

Export your virtual machine as a OVA/OVF which will do integrity check during the operation. Anytime you need that, you may import the OVA using vSphere client. When we do this operation, we no need to focus on individual files of the virtual machines.

Regards,

Suresh

[m4biz]

Hi hussainbte‌, thanks for your reply.

I've no more free space available on the disk that host the VMFS datastore.

For this reason I'd like to start a backupped VM directly from the external HD (a normal Western Digital MyPassport USB drive) and only to see if the backup would be really available in a disaster recovery scenario.

[hussainbte]

Hello m4biz,

Well, you can mount the USB to the ESXi host as a NFS share and copy the files -- check the linked KB.

However, I don't think we can power on the VM from the same NFS storage.

VMware KB: Mounting a Linux partition/USB device as an NFS share to an ESXi host