{"id":267,"date":"2013-12-26T15:11:14","date_gmt":"2013-12-26T15:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/?p=267"},"modified":"2013-12-26T15:11:29","modified_gmt":"2013-12-26T15:11:29","slug":"mounting-usb-datastore-in-vsphere-esxi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/mounting-usb-datastore-in-vsphere-esxi\/","title":{"rendered":"Mounting a USB datastore in VSphere ESXi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I first started working with VMWare VSphere ESXi, I was surprised to discover that it does not support mounting a USB drive as a datastore.  OK, maybe not that surprised given EMC&#8217;s business model, but still&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>My solution:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Mount the disk in a helper VM\n<ul>\n<li>Create a helper VM running Linux<\/li>\n<li>Configure the VM to pass the USB device through to the guest<\/li>\n<li>Mount the USB device in linux, say in \/mnt\/usbdrive<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>NFS Export the disk from the helper VM\n<ul>\n<li>Enable NFS in Linux (eg yum install nfs-utils)<\/li>\n<li>Export the disk via a line in \/etc\/exports like:<br \/>\n\/usbdrive              1.2.3.4\/32(rw,sync,no_root_squash)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Mount the NFS storage in the hypervisor\n<ul>\n<li>Enable NFS in ESXi<\/li>\n<li>Create a new datastore from network storage<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/USB-Storage-on-VMWare-Infographic.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/USB-Storage-on-VMWare-Infographic.png\" alt=\"USB Storage on VMWare Infographic\" width=\"720\" height=\"672\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-269\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/USB-Storage-on-VMWare-Infographic.png 720w, http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/USB-Storage-on-VMWare-Infographic-300x280.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Caveats:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This configuration is best used for administrative tasks like backing up\/restoring\/moving VMs.  I don&#8217;t recommend running a live VM in this configuration.  <\/li>\n<li>Due to the risk of deadlock, it is far better to put the helper VM on a different VSphere instance.\n<li>\n<li>Make sure to remove the VSphere datastore before powering down the helper VM.  If you don&#8217;t, the datastore will hang and can&#8217;t be removed until you reboot the hypervisor.\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I first started working with VMWare VSphere ESXi, I was surprised to discover that it does not support mounting a USB drive as a datastore. OK, maybe not that surprised given EMC&#8217;s business model, but still&#8230; My solution: Mount &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/mounting-usb-datastore-in-vsphere-esxi\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-vmware"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275,"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions\/275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}