VMware vSphere

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  • 1.  Mounting an external USB Hard Drive to work as .ISO storage

    Posted Jan 24, 2012 09:45 PM

    Hi all,

    I am new to VMWare, and my Unix skills are really rusty, but I am hoping someone can help me with the following:

    I am running vSpehere ESXi 5.0 andI want to install multiple Guest OSes on that host.  I have all the different Guest OSes on an external Hard Drivwe that is formatted with NTFS.  I would like to mount my external hard drive on the VMWare Host and then mount an individual .ISO for installing a new VM.  Can anyone help?

    Thanks, Brad



  • 2.  RE: Mounting an external USB Hard Drive to work as .ISO storage

    Posted Jan 24, 2012 09:57 PM

    Welcome to the Community - Easiest way would be to mount the external USB drive to your workstation and using the vsphere client to configure you VM to point the virtual cd-rom to the external USB drive. In addition once attached to you local workstation you will also be able to copy the ISO images to the ESXi host and have them available on the host.



  • 3.  RE: Mounting an external USB Hard Drive to work as .ISO storage

    Posted Jan 24, 2012 10:17 PM

    I tried both of the two options you suggested without any luck, but maybe I am missing something.

    First I connected the external USB Hard Drive and then I searched VSphere Client for an easy (i.e. GUI) way to map that NTFS drive, but I could not find anything.  I was hoping that I could mount it at some mount point in the VMFS, then simply copy the files to the VMWare Host's hard drive so the ISOs would be there for future purposes.  Again, no luck.  Am I doing somehting wrong?  What is the step-by-step procedure to mount this drive onto the VMFS?

    Second I tried to configure the VM's CDROM/DVDROM to point to this external USB drive or to an ISO on the drive, but the VMWare host does not give me that option.  Maybe I am missing something.

    FWIW - I was able to figure out how to connect this USB drive to a VM once the VM has an OS installed, but I am trying to install a new OS on a new VM.  So, that didn't help.

    FYI - I am running vShpere Hypervision ESXi 5.0 and using vSphere Cleint 5.0 to administer.  I can connect to the VM Host via Putty (SSH) and I remember some Unix commands.

    Thanks in advance, Brad



  • 4.  RE: Mounting an external USB Hard Drive to work as .ISO storage
    Best Answer

    Posted Jan 24, 2012 10:36 PM

    So when you connect the USB to your workstation where you are running the vSphere Client from you cannot browse the drive?

    When you create the VM yoo can have the virtual cd-rom point to your local cd or browse to an ISO image on you local machine. Check out section 4 of http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-virtual-machine-admin-guide.pdf particularly starting on page 42

    One thing also point out is your ESXi host will not be able to read from an NTFS volume -



  • 5.  RE: Mounting an external USB Hard Drive to work as .ISO storage

    Posted Jan 24, 2012 11:40 PM

    David Weinstein wrote:

    So when you connect the USB to your workstation where you are running the vSphere Client from you cannot browse the drive?

    When you create the VM yoo can have the virtual cd-rom point to your local cd or browse to an ISO image on you local machine. Check out section 4 of http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-virtual-machine-admin-guide.pdf particularly starting on page 42

    One thing also point out is your ESXi host will not be able to read from an NTFS volume -

    David,

    I was confusing the terminology.  After reading your earlier post again, I am now able to do what you described, mount a local ISO that is present on my local workstation running vSphere Client as a CDROM for my new VM, which as we speak is installing an OS.  Thanks!

    Can you elaborate on how I can copy ISOs from my local workstation to the ESXi Host so they will be there for future use?

    Thanks again, Brad



  • 6.  RE: Mounting an external USB Hard Drive to work as .ISO storage

    Posted Jan 25, 2012 08:53 AM

    If your local machine is windows, you can use winscp tool. If it is linux you can use SCP command.