How can I (temporarily) mount an ext3 partition to copy VMs to the data store?

[Skynet007]

Hi all!

I wanted to test some VM backups on an ESX 5.5u3 server.

I know I could just copy them over the network, but I thought that disk to disk would be quicker.  So I attached a SATA drive directly to test server's main board, but when I tried to issue a mount command the command doesn't exist.

I know that the ESX hypervisor is a cut down version of linux, but I read somewhere that ESX servers (can't remember which version) can read ext3 partitions.

Does anyone know how to mount an ext3 partition from the ESX cli?

[sk84]

ESXi does not support Linux file systems and therefore does not know them (see: Types of Datastores ).

You can only connect USB hard drives with a Ext3 filesystem to ESXi and then pass them as USB pass-through devices to virtual machines, but you can't connect it as a local datastore to copy files on ESXi level.

I know that the ESX hypervisor is a cut down version of linux,

Basically, ESXi is no longer Linux but it is now its own operating system, which only has similarities with Linux.

[Skynet007]

I was fairly certain that I read it somewhere so I exercised my Google fu and found the article...

https://www.vladan.fr/plug-in-the-external-usb-drive-to-esx-server-directly-to-backup-or-copy/

Is says mount is used as follows:

mount /dev/[device_name] /mnt/usb -t [filesystem_type]

It was updated in 2017, but was originally written in 2010 based on the comments, so what may have once been possible is no more.

[continuum]

That blog was written for ESX  not ESXi.

Nowadays ESXi can only mount VMFS and FAT 16 and there is no mount command available.