Disconnecting NAS with non-os folders

[TIANZAN]

Hi,

Some devices in our rack doesn't have redundant power supply'options and were running for a while on single power. Now we need to connect them to dual power using a power switch that has dual power. Problem is two of these devices are NAS devices that are mounted as datastores in vmware. They are used for backups. So some servers have drives mounted for packup target from this datastore.

What would be the best way to accomplish the power off/ power on of NAS during the power source change without turning off the VM?

As they are only used for backups, Can I just unmount the drives from inside all VM guest OSes that are using them and then unmount them from Host configuration and turn off? Or is it mandatory to turn the VMs off? Just incase a there is a power outage before this change and NAS got shut down, Will only the drives goes inaccessible or the VM using it also goes become unusable?

Regards

[scott28tt]

So your backups are being done from within the guest OSes in your VMs?

If so, your hosts will see that as regular disk activity going to the VMDK files for the VMs where the “servers have drives mounted”.

I would suggest shutting down those VMs if you know that datastore will be offline.

[TIANZAN]

Thanks scott.

We are doing agent based backups as the server based Veeam backups causes performance issues. Problem is the VM is high priority and needs to be up always. It may not be put offline during the whole period of the maintenance.

Can we not just disable/detach the disk from inside the VM and then shut down the NAS? Also if incase the NAS got shutdown with disk mounted, would it crash the VM?