Any way to use a usb as datastore

[HellMind]

I got a esxi 5 installed on a 8gb pendrive, but I want to use  all the space left.

I just need to create a really tiny vm, optimized to run on flash.

Isn't production

Anyone got a way?

Maybe...

Uploading a nfsd binary?

Uploading a iscsi target binary?

Doing some virtual datastore?

Using magical commands on ssh?

Help.

I really dont want to buy another sata controller + hdd (there are no hd so small as 8gb now)

[AndreTheGiant]

As I know is not possible.

[HellMind]

There must be a hack, work around...

A way to remove the removable flag from the device

[AndreTheGiant]

One possible workaround is add the USB storage to a VM and install NFS on it.

But the performance of a USB stick will be really poor.

[HellMind]

You mean, iwth vt-d , direct access or whatever is called, but.

You cant create a vm without storage.

I want to do this, like runing a live cd linux distro.

How can I create a vm without datastore?

[AndreTheGiant · Accepted solution]

No... I mean with the normal USB virtualization introduced in vSphere 4.1

In vSphere 5 is fast enough to run a full USB 2.0 emulation.

[abbie11]

Hi ESXi does not support using local, internal SATA drives on the host server to create VMFS datastores
that are shared across multiple ESXi hosts.

Yours, Abbie

[HellMind]

But still, you need a datastore for

.vmsd

.vmx

.vmxf

even if vmsd is 0 sized