Mounting an External HDD to Windows running on VMW in an HP c7000 Blade Enclosure

[enforcerupu]

Hello, I am currently attempting to move 800GB of data from an external HDD on to a Windows server for DFS purposes.  We have a cluster of VMWare servers all stored on blades in an HP c7000 enclosure.  However, I can't figure any way to mount this external drive to the Windows server.  I know that VMWare supports USB drives, but I'm not certain of a way to connect it via the OA and have the blade/chassis recognize it.

I can always connect a laptop and mount it there to move it over the LAN, but am hoping there is a better means of doing this.  Thanks!

[zchris]

Hi,

You should be able to have the Windows VM see the external disk through a USB passthrough

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/documentLink.do?externalID=1022290&micrositeID=null

The blades have a SUV (Serial, USB, VGA) connector, BL460 G1, G5, and G7's the connector is exposed. On G8's it is covered, here's the quickspecs which show the location of the cover and connector.

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/14208_na/14208_na.html

So assuming the external HDD is compatible, you should be able to use the SUV to connect directly to the blade and bypass the OA.

Hope this helps.

Chris

[Casper42]

USB Drives in the OA are only used for providing access to ISO files.
These will show up in the OS/Hypervisor as DVD drives and not HDDs.

So for connecting a HDD and seeing the contents, the front panel SUV is really the only option.

[M_J_S]

Why does it need to be connected directly?

You could mount the usb drive to a client PC and copy the files through the network. Why make things more complex than they need to be?

If you are running HA and DRS in your vmware environment, you will jeopardize the flexibility by mounting a non shared drive.