VMWare: Can I use a USB hard drive as a datastore at home

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I have my
My HP DL360e Gen8 Server

HP DL360e Gen8 Server Dual Intel E5-2430v2 6 core CPUs ( VIRL shows it as 24 cores, 12 physical)
96GB RAM
4 NICs onboard
P222 SAS controller and two SAS drives
dual power supplies
15 month HP 24x7 Warranty left on it.

Added:
HP dual NIC card
8GB SDHC card in the SD slot on motherboard

I use it for my Cisco Virtual Lab and Web Server. It has VMware 6 U 3 Standalone on the 8GB SDHC. I want to hook up a USB hard drive not thumb drive. Create it as a data store. Clone the two VMs and move them to this data store as backup.

I don't want to go out and get the Essentials Kit for $560 to run backup software right now. I would like to be able to make a copy of the VMs. Remove the current datastores from the two SAS drives. Add two more SAS drives and recreate them as a 4 drive RAID 10 array. then move then clone them back.

I don't need performance at home. yes, I know It is not fully supported. I have the web server www folder backed up to tape. Cisco VIRL can be reinstalled in a few hours. Just thinking of a way around it.

Michael,

Great run down on what you have set up as a lab, and sounds like it is doing multiple things for you on several fronts !!!

So the short answer to your question is YES !!! However, there are some caveats. The biggest one is that this not an officially supported capability, which really just means that with a little creativity it works, just do not plan on opening a support ticket if something goes wrong. :)

Check this article out, as it has all of the pertinent info, as well as great pointers on how to do it the right way. Also, since you are close to 6.5, follow the link at the top of the article to take a peek at what changes in 6.5 if you are planning on an upgrade at some point.

www.virten.net/2015/10/usb-devices-as-vmfs-datastore-in-vsphere-esxi-6-0/

Good luck and let me know if I can help you out with anything else.

Cheers,

Adam

I just want it as a clone backup for now. Clone the VM, move it to another datastore. I will get Essentials Kit in the future. In less than 5 weeks, my son Kieran Killian McKenney arrives. Thanks for the link.

I am going to start it tonight. I did a ext4 format on my USB drive. Took about a day. I will unplug and start the procedure tonight. I will report back on it.

Completed it in 20 minutes. No issues. I need to get an Essentials Kit license to use it for a backup.

Michael,

Thanks for the updates on your progress. It looks like you were able to get it all sorted and that everything ended up quickly and successful.

Let me know if I can be of any additional help, or if you have any other questions that you want to chat about.

Adam

Looking at VMware licensing so I can backup the VMs. Cheapest seems to be $600+ for Essentials kit and Vaeem backup software. No way to clone, copy, or backup without an expensive license from VMware.

Try the 'ovftool' to backup to external servers. It has worked for me on many occasions but can only be run on the external server itself afaik.

I have have had success doing backups using the veeam backup free edition

https://www.veeam.com/blog/veeam-backup-free-edition-now-with-powershell.html

the powershell script lets you do scheduled backups. Maybe this will help out.

Hunter,

Great additional resource !! Thanks for the contribution. :)