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Is it possible to directly attach a USB external hard drive to a virtual machine? (As opposed to &nbsp;making it a datastore and putting a .vmdk on it)?<br />
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We have a Windows Server 2008 physical box. We do regular backups to an external hard drive using the built-in Windows Server Backup feature.<br />
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I want to do a test restore of one of these backups to a VM, just to see if it works. What good is a backup if you never test it?<br />
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The problem is I don't have any idea how to connect the USB backup disk to the VM so it can recognize it and restore from it.<br />
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I'm using VMWare ESXi 5.1 free edition and vSphere. I'm open to using a different free hypervisor (Xen, Hyper-V, Virtualbox etc.) if necessary.
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Is it possible to directly attach a USB external hard drive to a virtual machine? (As opposed to  making it a datastore and putting a .vmdk on it)?

We have a Windows Server 2008 physical box. We do regular backups to an external hard drive using the built-in Windows Server Backup feature.

I want to do a test restore of one of these backups to a VM, just to see if it works. What good is a backup if you never test it?

The problem is I don't have any idea how to connect the USB backup disk to the VM so it can recognize it and restore from it.

I'm using VMWare ESXi 5.1 free edition and vSphere. I'm open to using a different free hypervisor (Xen, Hyper-V, Virtualbox etc.) if necessary.

USB External HD directly connected to a VM?

VMware, a software company founded in 1998,  was one of the first commercially successful companies to offer x86 virtualization. The storage company EMC purchased VMware in 1994. Dell Technologies acquired EMC in 2016. VMware’s parent company is now Dell Technologies.

VMware has many software products that run on desktops, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS, which allows the virtualizing of the x86 architecture.  Its enterprise software hypervisor for servers, VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), is a bare-metal hypervisor that runs directly on the server hardware and does not require an additional underlying operating system.

VMware

Virtualization is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, including (but not limited to) a virtual computer hardware platform, operating system (OS), storage device, or computer network resources. Virtualization is usually the creation of a system that executes separate from the underlying hardware resources, or the creation of an entire desktop for systems located elsewhere, similar to thin clients.

Virtualization

Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, based on the Microsoft Vista codebase, is the last 32-bit server operating system released by Microsoft. It has a number of versions, including including Foundation, Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, Web, HPC Server, Itanium and Storage; new features included server core installation and Hyper-V.