Install SATA Hard Disk into ESXi system

[Nudge]

I just build a server system with ESXi and an Areca RAID datastore with 4 SATA HD drives (320GB for each). The ESXi OS is installed on Disk On Module installed directly on the motherboard.

The system runs very well. Now I want to add a SATA 2.5" Hard Disk in a 5.1/4" slide bay connected by a SATA connector with the motherboard, but from vSphere Client (in admin mode, maintenance) I can't see and mount this disk: there areonly listed the DVD-ROM drive and the Areca RAID.

My question is: could I use this removable disk in ESXi as a datastore or I need a SATA HD connected directly to the motherboard without slide bay?

Other answers are appreciated...thanks!

Stefano.

[hstagner]

Hello Nudge,

It is highly likely that the SATA controller on the motherboard is not supported by ESXi 4. SATA is only supported as a VMFS datastore when the disks are attached to certain SAS/SATA Controllers. A lot of the SATA controllers built in to motherboards will not work.

You can check the VMware HCL to see supported SAS/SATA Controllers here:

I hope this helps.

Don't forget to use the buttons on the side to award points if you found this useful (you'll get points too).

Regards,

Harley Stagner

[Nudge]

Thanks for answer, I attached my SATA box to the motherboard and...wow the ESXi recognised the hard disk inside. This because I rebooted the machine, so on restart it loaded the SATA drive. The I disconnected the disk from the slide bay and re-attached to it but however my ESXi can't recognise the disk. So how could I do to make usable this removable disk? I can't restart the physical machine every time I need the removable disk because it's a server system and it needs to be always on.

Thanks ealry for you answer,

regards.

Stefano.

[J1mbo]

ESX has no real capability to deal with hot-plug disks.

If you had a RAID card, that would deal with the hot-plugging, but only from the perspective of hiding the hot-plug event from ESX by presenting a consistent (but degraded) volume if one of a RAID group were to be removed.

Please award points to any useful answer.

[Nudge]

Is possible that my SATA slide bay can't be recognised by AHCI enabled on BIOS? This fault hot-plug was also on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003R2 installed onto server hardware (so not on ESXi), so I had to power on machine server with disk inside, otherwise the disk was not be found.

I have to resolve this error bacause I need to backup server on this removable disks.

Thanks to all for any help!

Stefano.

[J1mbo]

Quite possible, but you won't be able to backup to any kind of removable disk directly with an ESXi server. You will need another machine to handle that running an OS natively.

Please award points to any useful answer.

[Nudge]

I have installed VMWare Data Recovery that help users to make backup of virtual machine directly from vSphere Client, but this step requires a datastore to make backup, and since I have no SATA removable disk I can't use this backup feature. Well since this slide bay works when I power on machine with disk inside, I only have to make ESXi capable to recognise removable disk on run time...

[hstagner]

Hello Nudge,

What you are trying to do (have a removeable drive attached to ESX) is not going to work well for you. VMware Data Recovery can use a network share as its backup repository. My suggestion is to set up a share to store your backups. Then if you need to move the backups offsite, copy the backups to tape or removable disk. For more information on how to automate this process, take a look at this whitepaper from Xtravirt.

Tape Backup Integration with VMware Data Recovery (VDR)

I hope this helps.

Don't forget to use the buttons on the side to award points if you found this useful (you'll get points too).

Regards,

Harley Stagner