ESX 3i Update 5 - How to add/detect a USB external storage drive on the host

[IOspaceStorms]

I'm assuming this has been asked several times in the past, but I can not seem to get this to work for me. All I want to do is use this USB external drive to backup the .vmdk files found in my "datastore1" volume. I would like to set up a script, or even do this manually, where I'll tell my ESXi host to just copy the files in the VMFS volume into the USB external storage drive.

My physical server is a Dell PowerEdge 2950, and it is using ESX 3i Update 5. I am using a 250 GB Maxtor One Touch II USB external storage device, and it has been formatted with NTFS.

Currently, I don't even know the commands to even detect this USB device. I read that in order for my drive to be recognized by the host, it needs to be FAT32 or ext3. NTFS would be "read-only." I was hoping to be able to format the external drive through the ESXi (by command line), but maybe I'm fooling myself.

Thank you in advance

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

I am sorry to say what you are attempting is not possible - external USB are not usable by ESXi or ESX =

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[Troy_Clavell]

USB of IP is your only hope

http://www.digi.com/pdf/wp_ESXServer_AnywhereUSB.pdf

[IOspaceStorms]

So, this article is bogus?

There is a comment on the bottom of that stating that it isn't working for him, but it also says (see bold):

login as: root

's password:

Last login: Thu Aug 13 17:37:50 2009 from 10.75.202.55

root@UYMVDVMP02 root# tail /var/log/dmesg

hub.c: USB hub found

hub.c: 7 ports detected

EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on cciss(104,2), internal journal

Adding Swap: 554200k swap-space (priority -1)

kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds

EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on cciss(104,1), internal journal

EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.

kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds

EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on cciss(104,6), internal journal

EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.

root@UYMVDVMP02 root#

This makes me think it may be related to the USB external drive that I may be using since I can't even detect the device, but the commenter in that link was successful in getting the ESX host to detect the USB hub. So...what gives? Maybe this is only for ESX and not ESXi?

I don't want my guestOS VMs to detect the USB drive. I really just want the ESXi host to detect it. If you're definitely sure that it can't, then I don't understand why this was made by design.

[IOspaceStorms]

Well, I guess USB devices are not supported in ESX or ESXi's vmkernel. Bummer.

In addition, it seems that the article I provided earlier is a great way to corrupt .vmdk files.

I will try to find a different solution.

[DSTAVERT]

There are some esata controllers that could provide external storage (would require a restart of the host to change). I do remember a post about a hot swap setup with a dual drives someone had come up with. There are also small NAS devices with NFS support that can accept hot plug USB. Iomega have several that have GB network connectivity and less than 100. Set up the NFS devices as a datastore.

[rbaldauf]

personally, i would prefer to just simple set up an iscsi-target with a linux-distribution and get maybe two 500G drives in a raid 1. should note take more then one hour and your esx will accept it as storage. you can format it with vmfs which is much better for the really big vmdk-files than any filesystem of a nfs-server. be sure to understand the difference between SAN and NAS.

best regards

rb