external Hard Drive with VMware ESXi Guest
How do I use USB Hard Drives with our Server 2008 R2 virtual server that is in VMware ESXi 5?
I'd like to be able to use a number of them or large capacity thumb drives for daily data backups. I obviously don't want to have to restart the Guest OS each time I plug/unplug a device.
I've tried passthrough of the USB ports, but that achieved nothing.
I've tried adding a USB controller, but all that does is allow me to attach USB devices connected to my laptop that uses vSphere Client.
I'd like to be able to use a number of them or large capacity thumb drives for daily data backups. I obviously don't want to have to restart the Guest OS each time I plug/unplug a device.
I've tried passthrough of the USB ports, but that achieved nothing.
I've tried adding a USB controller, but all that does is allow me to attach USB devices connected to my laptop that uses vSphere Client.
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
I tried this but it only allowed me to connect to devices on my laptop...
I achieved what I wanted using a different method as I do not wish to need to connect to vSphere every time I plug/unplug a hard drive.
So what I did was went to the advanced option on the Host configuration, and setup a passthrough for all USB controllers and the SATA controllers (my HDD's are SAS on a LSi MegaRaid card).
This allowed me to then "add PCI/PCIe device" to the Guest OS's and assign SATA and USB controllers to each Guest.
It took a good darn while to determine which USB ports belong to which controllers, but I got it sorted.
Is there a better way I should be doing this?