VMware and

[Rod McKnight]

I recently purchased a HP Proliant ML370 with a integrated DAT 72 storage drive. I want to run ESXI on this server with a DC and SQL virtal machines setup. Is it possible to run HP Data Protector Express on the DC vm and still be able to access the tape drive on the server. I've installed Express on my DC but cannot see the tape drive to backup to. VM tools have been installed. One thing I did notice after already installing ESXI that there is a HP version of ESXI. Is this necessary or just a nicety to have additional tools to interface witht he server?
Thanks for your help in advance.

[Uwe Zessin]

A long, long time ago...
... there was some support for tape drives when they were connected to a parallel-SCSI HBA from Adaptec, but it was never extended to other HBAs, Fibre Channel-attached tapes, SmartArray-passthru tapes or SAS interconnects.

I am afraid you need a physical Linux/Windows machine for backups.

[Rod McKnight]

Thanks for the info. I figured I would probably run into a problem trying to run the backup software on my VM within the server. VMware's ESXI is very limiting so I guess I am going to have to re-think this ESXI architecture.