We have a backup appliance (BackupVM). BackupVM has four drives; OS, NAS01, NASOptional01, and NASOptional02. NAS01, NASOptional01, and NASOptional02 store hard drive files (vmdk) for the appliance's storage pool. NAS01 is an always available internal array on the NAS. NASOptional01 and NASOptional02 are USB based rotational archives connected to the NAS. Only one will be connected at a time. BackupVM through ESXi connects to these NFS datastores via dedicated uplink to the NAS.
I was able to add two new hard drives one on NASOptional01 and one on NASOptional02 to the VM. I can unplug one or the other and ESXi finds / inactivates the datastore without issue. BackupVM has no problems with removing the USB drives.
The problem arises when BackupVM is powered down. At any given time there will only be one USB drive connected to the NAS therefore the other datastore will be inactive.
As a result, BackupVM fails to boot. Stating missing hard drive.
I can't connect BackupVM directly to the NFS share since it needs to be connected to the VM network.
Is there anyway we can power up BackupVM and ignore / add / reactivate the missing drive later in the cycle?
Steve
