ESXi

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  • 1.  Adding USB drives to VMHosts

    Posted Aug 30, 2013 08:31 PM

    Hello,

    We have two VM Hosts.  One was built in a RAID 5 and the other was built in a RAD50 (Not my choice).  Since I have taken over the tech department, I want to move the VM's off the RAID50 host and rebuild to a RAID 5 so I can utilize the extra TB of space.  I have a 3TB USB drive and would like to use that to move the VM's to until I can rebuild the RAID array. 

    How do I get the USB drive to show up so I can move the VM's?

    Thanks in Advance!!



  • 2.  RE: Adding USB drives to VMHosts

    Posted Sep 13, 2013 12:31 PM


    Hello,

    Why you don't use a simple mount unmount usb drive.

    I think it will work.

    Yours,
    Mar Vista



  • 3.  RE: Adding USB drives to VMHosts

    Posted Sep 16, 2013 08:08 AM

    > How do I get the USB drive to show up so I can move the VM's?

    No way - ESXi can not use USB-drives as a datastore.

    You can only use the USB-drive on your admin-host and then use Datastorebrowser to copy the VMs



  • 4.  RE: Adding USB drives to VMHosts

    Posted Sep 17, 2013 10:16 AM

    There's no supported way to use create a datastore from usb.

    USB arbitrator will claim the USB for passthrough and won't format it with vmfs.

    But you can create VMFS volume in FC,iSCSI or even local iSCSI disk.

    Anyways you can copy the VM files using Veeam.

    The Veeam Backup and Replication allows you copying files from ESX(i) datastore to whatever location you want.Try it out!!

    Hope this helps!!!

    ----------------------------------

    Regards,

    SatyS

    If you find this useful,mark the answer as correct/helpful



  • 5.  RE: Adding USB drives to VMHosts

    Posted Sep 18, 2013 01:06 PM

    Just as Satys mentioned. You can use Veeam Backup & Replication to move the files. Veeam Backup Free Edition should work fine.  It is also capable of moving a live VM to any host or datastore.



  • 6.  RE: Adding USB drives to VMHosts

    Posted Sep 21, 2013 07:33 AM

    You cannot use the USB storage as a datastore so you cannot move the running machines to USB.

    What the best you can do, log into the shell by enabling it from the ESXi Host then compress the virtual machine and copy paste to USB Storage.Configure the RAID 5 and then restore the machine to that storage.

    Take care!