How to mount an USB drive under VMWare ESXi 5.5?
I was able to make this happen by formatting the USB drive appropriately. as a FAT16 partition at 2GB or less (my example is 500MB)
In Windows, open a commmand prompt as admin and type diskpart:
C:\Windows\system32>diskpart
Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: MIS-001
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 465 GB 0 B
Disk 1 Online 29 GB 0 B
DISKPART> select disk 1
Disk 1 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> list part
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 29 GB 1024 KB
DISKPART> clean
DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.
DISKPART> active
There is no partition selected.
Please select a partition and try again.
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 465 GB 0 B
* Disk 1 Online 29 GB 29 GB
DISKPART> create part primary size=500
DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.
DISKPART> active
DiskPart marked the current partition as active.
DISKPART> format fs=fat quick
100 percent completed
DiskPart successfully formatted the volume.
DISKPART> assign
DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.
DISKPART> exit
Also: /u/ewwhite Someone asked the question:
"Why are you trying to do this?"
In my case, I had to reinstall Network Drivers after failed hardware. I had no guest access, no host access, and no storage access after a hard failure of the host. Reinstalling NIC drivers via USB or CD was only way to update these blades.
Why are you trying to do this?
I have a whole bunch of operating system ISOs on an external drive that I'd like to use on my home ESXi 6 lab, but I can't mount them directly.
Here's what I did:
- Install Debian in a virtual machine
- Pass the drive you'd like to access to the Debian VM
- Mount the USB drive(s) in the VM, (for example, to
/mnt/img0
) - Install
nfs-kernel-server
into the Debian machine Configure Debian's
/etc/exports
to point to/mnt/img0
. For example, you could add the line:/mnt/img0 1.2.3.4(rw,sync,no_subtree_check,all_squash)
- Replace
1.2.3.4
with the IP address of your ESXi host
- Replace
- In your virtual machine settings, add a new NFS datastore. Point it to the IP address if your Debian VM, leaving username and password blank if you used the sample
/etc/exports
above.
Now, you should be able to access the files on the USB drive as a datastore. It will also be mounted under /vmfs
if you log into the ESXi host via ssh.
Admittedly, this is a lot of work to use a USB drive, but this worked in a pinch.