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ld_ferg
Contributor
Contributor

USB Mass Storage with ESX Server 3.x

i'm wanting to add an external USB hard drive as a storage area on my ESX 3.x server in an effort to store some P2V images. i'm P2V'ing from windows 2000/2003 servers to the ESX server and am running out of space.

thanks for your input.

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EGRAdmin
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

My understanding is you would do it like this.

mkdir /mnt/usbdrive

fdisk -lu|more

note devices

plug in your USB device

fdisk -lu|more

get USB device name

mount /dev/usbdevice /mnt/usbdrive

then you should be able to access your USB storage device.

ld_ferg
Contributor
Contributor

when mounting i get the message:

fs type ntfs not supported by kernel.

is there a way to format the usb device to the correct type?

btw, when i connected my usb device it was detected as: scsi sdc at scsi1, channel0, id0, lun1

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EGRAdmin
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I would have to look it up.

But I'm pretty sure the device needs to be formatted FAT32 for ESX to recognise it.

I think you can do it form ESX like this;

fdisk /dev/device

m to enter fdisk options

d deletes a partition

l lists the options and FAT32 is 50 I think.

n will add a partition.

If you pick the wrong device you can really damage your setup so you could always format it on a Windows box to be safe.

esiebert7625
Immortal
Immortal

Check out the below thread, you might instead try creating a mount to a Windows Server or use NFS on a Windows Server instead.

Mount USB device on ESX server - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=81707&messageID=629349

http://vmware-land.com/Vmware_Tips.html#ESX5

http://vmware-land.com/Vmware_Tips.html#ESX8

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ld_ferg
Contributor
Contributor

it appears i have formatted and created a linux partition on the USB device.

now i've got the mount syntax incorrect. when you use mount /dev/sdc1 /dev/usbdrive i get the message: no filesystem type specified.

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ld_ferg
Contributor
Contributor

i've added a file system via: mkfs.ext3 and have successfully mounted it at the ESX server but i'm not able to see it with my VI Client to setup a storage area and use it.

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Schorschi
Expert
Expert

Datestores must be SCSI based, either fabric oriented, iSCSI, or DASD scsi. USB does not by-pass the SCSI constraint. If you look under /vmfs/devices/disks, you will only see SCSI devices that are acceptable to the VMKernel, which is what Datastore setup in VI client expects.

Some have used SATA II which emulates SCSI (or mimics SCSI) so that it uses the SCSI interface, and an ESX host can be tweaked to see SATA II as SCSI type devices, and thus seen as candidates for Datastores. But this is not supported by VMware. Only true SCSI is supported.

What you can do, is mount the USB or even IDE disks as EXT2 or EXT3, and use them for anything in the COS, say for backup LUN for vcbMounter or vmkfstools exports. But not Datastores.

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Schorschi
Expert
Expert

Forgot to mention... You can of course use NFS via NAS, so if you setup a NAS device, and attached the USB storage to it, then of course you could use that method to get a USB mass storage device as a Datastore, be it indirectly.

One idea, which I have not tried, is to create mount point via NFS daemon in the COS, which points to a USB mass storage device, and then trick ESX host into talking to its-self via NFS. This might make the NFS mount visible to VI as a NFS datastore. However, this would generate extensive traffic in the COS, which it was/is not designed to handle, after all the ESX COS with NFS support was never designed to a NAS server.

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Erik_Zandboer
Expert
Expert

Hi,attaching the COS to itself for NFS can work, but not by default. The only supported NFS solution is nfs via TCP (v3). This is not part of the COS. I got it working, but you need to change a lot to the host to get it working. Performance is not great...

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