Using an external SCSI tape drive with ESX for use by a virtual machine

[sbranchfbfs]

Can an external SCSI tape drive be connected to a ESX server (with the controller installed internally) for use with a virutal machine. I know that an internal SCSI device can be configured for use by a virutal machine. But I need to know if a external tape device connected with a SCSI cable to a SCSI interface can be used.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Yes you can, but it's only supported when using an Adaptec SCSI card. See the other 2 requirements here on the bottom of page 2 - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_backup_guide.pdf.

If you can avoid it, it's best to use another backup method as problems with the tape device may require that you reboot the ESX host and thus all the VMs running on it to fix the issue.

[weinstein5]

Yes you can - cehck out

[khughes]

If you're thinking about doing your backups to tape with a VM its something that can be done, but like the other 2 posted it could cause some headaches down the road.

What we ended up doing was keeping one of our lower end servers that was still under warrenty for a while and used it as a dedicated backup box with the SCSI tape drive attached. Its worked out really well to keep the backup stress off the ESX hosts along with any work we need to do with the tape drive or the server hosting it we can do without touching an ESX host. Another thing to think about is if you're going to be using that tape for a DR option, its going to make things sticky if you have to go and restore / rebuild that VM just to get the backups of your bulk production VMs off the tape.

- Kyle