Hi All,
I have my ESXi 4.1 host running on a Dell PE T610. I have a Tandberg Data RDX Quickstor 300GB removable SATA drive that I would like to use as a backup device with one of my VMs (Win SBS 2008). In vSphere Client I see the drive listed under the tab (not under ). I know I can add it as a 2nd datastore, but I really only want my VMs, rather than the host, to have access to it. If I do add it as a datastore, I do not think I can use it as a removable drive with my VM(s).
I am a VMware newbie, so maybe I am just overlooking something simple?
Attached is a screen shot from my vSphere Client showing the Configuration->Hardware->Storage tab info. I have no idea what the Path Selection options for this device are used for. The online help is quite useless, as it simply reiterate the same vague terminology as on the screen 
TIA,
-Mike
I got the Hot-swap RDX working via a physical RDM, not a virtual. I used post #11 as reference and the “CREATING A PHYSICAL RDM” section at http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/SATA_RDMs.php
A few steps not explained clearly in that document and I had trouble with as a VM Nub:
- I’m running ESXi 4.1, so I didn’t have to do any tricks to enable SSH. Just turned on the “Enable Remote Troubleshooting (SSH)” option from the console. This maybe wasn’t in older versions of ESXi, anyway didn't need to do anything weird to enable it.
- As mentioned in Step 3 in the above instructions, you need to have a datastore for the RDM VMDK file(s). If you notice he’s in “/vmfs/volumes/(some number)/RDMs. I did a ‘ls –l /vmfs/volumes’ to figure what the “some number” was of the datastore I wanted to put these files into. Then changed into that directory before running the ‘vmkfstools’ command. If you want then make the "RDMs" directory -- this is (hopefully) going to be my only RDM so I didn't make a subdiretory.
- Once the RDM1.vmdk, or whatever you called the file is created, to add it to the VM I had to “Use an existing virtual disk” as the “Raw Device Mapping” option was still 'grayed out' for me. I hought I was still supposed to use the "Raw Device Mapping” so I was confused for a bit.
- Once I booted up the server, Windows 2008 R2 noticed the RDX as a removable device and I was able to swap HDDs without any issues.
- In my case this was a P2V conversion and the RDX drivers were already loaded but you’d may need to load them for your VM.
I still need to test our backup software to the RDX and make sure there isn't some issues with compability or performace.
Maybe once I get the funds to setup a portable NFS store (thinnking this case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119196) I’ll move the device into that per DSTAVERT’s above suggestion. Worst case, we can revert the server with the RDX as a physical server for backups only once we get the new ESX server setup.
I'm still cutting my teeth on VMWare but I'm learning something new every day with only minor bruising. 
Thanks for the help everyone
