vmware 3i and linux native

[rbblue]

Hello all.

Im upgradring from vmware server vfree to vmware 3i and im hoping that i can find a way to use my virtual servers that were on the old disks.

so here was the old setup.

centos 5 with two hard drives that ran a software raid volume for the virtual servers.

before i installed 3i i broke the virtual raid and the data remained.ff

i installed 3i over the cent os install and it loads fine.

it see's the old disk and when i try and import it says that all the data will be destroyed; is there a way to import this disk whith reformating it?

[depping]

No, it's a totally different file system and there's no way to convert the disks to VMFS and hold all the data it contains. ESXi wants to create a VMFS3 datastore and needs to format the partition.

Duncan

My virtualisation blog:

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[rbblue]

what about mounting the drive and copying the data off?

[depping]

Yeah that's always a possibility, but probably not from the ESXi box. So you would need an extra box to get the data off.

Duncan

My virtualisation blog:

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[rbblue]

you should be able to mount this hard drive and use it... i mean esxi does detect the filesystem type and therefore should be able to read the data... one would think....

what about USB support? or is there none?

[depping]

there's no usb support...

Duncan

My virtualisation blog:

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[rbblue]

after reading the forums i see that you can enable ssh access to the server....

would that allow you to use the mount commands?

and no usb support as in... you are NOT able to mount usb drives at all?

[rbblue]

also wanted to be sure that i do not wish for my vm's to have usb support... does the esxi server it's self. planing on using the usb drive as a datastore....

[rbblue]

the drive shows up as /vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba1:1:0 in the add storage wizard.

i enabled ssh and was able to get into the box and was able to get to that directory.

there is no /vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba1:1:0 but there is /vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba1:1:0:0 and /vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba1:1:0:1.

i did a mkdir /recovered

then i tried to do a mount /vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba1:1:0:0 /recovered and it gave me error of "mount: Use esxcfg-nas"

then i tried to do a mount -t ext2 /vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba1:1:0:0 /recovered and it gave me error of " Mounting vmhba1:1:0:0 on /recovered failed: No such file or directory"

then i tried to do a mount /vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba1:1:0:1 /recovered and it gave me error of "mount: Use esxcfg-nas"

then i tried to do a mount -t ext2 /vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba1:1:0:1 /recovered and it gave me error of " Mounting vmhba1:1:0:1 on /recovered failed: No such file or directory"

any idea?

[rbblue]

when i issue the fdisk command it shows the drive as

/dev/disks/vmhba1:1:0:1 1 8941 71818551 83 Linux

is there ANYWAY i can get this data using esxi?

[rbblue]

what about giving the hard drive directly to a vm host?

is that possible in any way?

[akabyte]

I've been looking for a way to mount linux partitions in ESXi, however searching the forums and reading countless manuals have not yielded any results.

ESXi detects the physical volume, however when I try to use the standard linux mount commands, ESXi simply outputs an error that it can't find the disk as shown below:

1. # mount -t ext3 `/dev/disks/vmhba0\:1\:0\:1` /disk/

~ -ash: /dev/disks/vmhba0:1:0:1: Permission denied mount: Can't find /disk/ in /etc/fstab

If anyone knows a way around this problem some help would be appreciated.

Cheers,

[iwienand]

Assuming by Linux partitions you mean ext2/3 file-systems, ESXi has no support for reading these and can not mount them (if it's reporting anything, that would just be the fs type flag from the partition table. But the kernel has no support for reading the file system).

Your best bet would probably be to connect it to a Linux box and mount it via NFS on the ESXi box.

[akabyte]

Thanks for the prompt response. I see there is no support for ext2/3 file systems, that would explain my fruitless search of the forums.

Just wondering if you may know the underlying OS for ESXi, I presume its a form of BSD UNIX system, but I'm not totally sure.

Cheers,

[iwienand]

The underlying OS is the VMkernel. It's more or less a POSIX system from userspace, with ports of glibc and other standard components. However the kernel and system tools (things such as the module loader, config tools, etc) are VMware proprietary and designed/tuned for running virtual machines.

Although we realise people open up ssh access, the reason (or one of them!) it is unsupported is the environment is just enough like their Linux systems to cause confusion. Using the supported sysadmin tools ensures you're not relying on behaviour that may change as we develop the system (if the supported tools aren't doing something, I'm sure our product managers would love suggestions on what can be done to make them as useful as possible).