DAS and ESXi 6.0

[NonprofitIT]

I need some assistance.  We purchased a Buffalo Drivestation model HD-QH12TU3R5 DAS to use as extra storage for VMs.  The problem I am running into is that ESXi 6.0 does not see the extra storage and in the VMware vSphere Client when I search to add storage, it is not found there as well.

The server I am using for ESXi 6.0 is:

Dell PowerEdge R710

Svc Tag: H4GH5M1

Has anyone run into this type of issue?  I am trying to find out if I am possibly missing a step, I contacted Buffalo support and they did say that the DAS is compatible with ESXi 6.0.  Thank you.

[douglasarcidino]

I looked up your device and can you confirm the device is USB connected? I only see models with USB and the model you listed is USB only and that is the problem. USB drives are not supported as datastores for virtual machines. You can pass the USB device through to a virtual machine and all the VM to write to the USB device directly but ESXi will not mount a USB drive for storage of Virtual Machines in a supported fashion.

That being said, it is "possible" to do it in an unsupported way. If you were to go to your favorite search engine and search for "USB Datastore ESXi" without the quotes, there is some stuff out there.

Again this is not supported and do it at your own risk. I wouldn't do it for any data I cared about.

Buffalo support is wrong if they said it would work and it's USB only.

[unsichtbare]

I believe the problem is that this is USB storage. As far as ESXi is concerned, this is not DAS.

If the disks were being managed by the Dell R710, the ESXi would see them as Directly Attached Storage.

As it is, the HD-QH12TU3R5 is not on the  www.vmware.com/go/hcl, and will probably not work for ESXi storage