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THANK YOU! I was about to spend $1,000+ in hardware. I will give it a try.
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THANK YOU! I was about to spend $1,000+ in hardware. I will give it a try.

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Worked perfectly! Thank you!
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I installed VMware ESXi on a Dell 2950 to get out company more into virtuilazation however my Dell server does not have enough storage for what I want to do.<br />
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I read to pass a USB hard drive I needed a USB controller. I purchased a Startech USB 3.0 - 2 port controller but it looks like it requires legacy power connected. I noticed in the front of the server above the HDD tray there is a legacy power cord. If I purchased an extention cord to route to the back of the server would that power the PCI express device?<br />
<br />
Another option I am looking at is replacing the internal 72 GB SAS drives with 1 TB SAS drives. The USB option is much cheaper.
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I installed VMware ESXi on a Dell 2950 to get out company more into virtuilazation however my Dell server does not have enough storage for what I want to do.

I read to pass a USB hard drive I needed a USB controller. I purchased a Startech USB 3.0 - 2 port controller but it looks like it requires legacy power connected. I noticed in the front of the server above the HDD tray there is a legacy power cord. If I purchased an extention cord to route to the back of the server would that power the PCI express device?

Another option I am looking at is replacing the internal 72 GB SAS drives with 1 TB SAS drives. The USB option is much cheaper.

VMware pass through USB storage on a Dell 2950

Servers are computing devices that are similar to desktop computers in that they have the same basic components, but are significantly different in size, configuration and purpose. Servers are usually accessed over a network, and many run unattended, without a computer monitor, input device, audio hardware or USB interfaces. Many servers do not have a graphical user interface (GUI), and are configured and managed remotely. Servers typically include hardware redundancy such as dual power supplies, RAID disk systems, and ECC memory, along with extensive pre-boot memory testing and verification. Critical components might be hot swappable, and to guard against overheating, servers might have more powerful fans or use water cooling.

Server Hardware

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

Storage devices include any device used for storing and retrieving digital information. Hard disk drives (HDDs) use one or more rigid ("hard") rapidly rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order and not only sequentially. The primary competing technology for secondary storage is flash memory in the form of solid-state drives (SSDs), but HDDs remain the dominant medium for secondary storage due to advantages in price per bit and per-device recording capacity. CD-RW (Compact Disc-ReWritable) is a digital optical disc storage format that allows information to be stored outside the mechanical HDD.

Storage Hardware

Since 1984, Dell has been delivering technology to fit your life.
Dell is in Enterprise, Home Office and Consumer sectors of the market, supplying a broad range of customizable desktops, laptops, notebooks, servers, storage, and network devices.