I've just set up ESXi 4.0 on my office server. I'm running a couple of vm's from my main 250GB drive.
I want to create a backup of content in the virtual machines on the other 500GB drive. Right now I'm thinking of making a "backup vm" which would hold rsynced copies of key directories from all my other vms.
How can I make a vm that uses this second drive. It looks like I'd need to make a new datastore and put a VM on that datastore — but I can't figure out how to add a new datastore.
Best Answer
From your Inventory view in the VI Client, select your ESX Host, select the Configuration Tab, Select Storage and then click on the Add Storage link just above the upper right* side of the Datastores summary pane. Once in that just follow the wizard for adding a new Disk\LUN.
Depending on how you've added the new drive and what it is you may need to go to Storage Adaptors and select the Rescan link in the same place. For dynamically added storage from a SAN you may even need to rescan a couple of times but for a new local drive this should not be necessary.
*I meant the other left...