Ssh – howto copy files on esxi datastore using scp

scpsshvmware-esxi

how to copy files on esxi4 datastore (fs=vmfs) over network using console (SSH)?

giving up older question:have seen on vmware forums that its not possible
have a USB drive NTFS attached to ESXi4 host. fdisk -l shows the device as /dev/mpx…. but when i try to mount that using mount /dev/xxx /mnt/usbdisk….it fails with message "no such file or dir"

could anyone help with correct entry in etc/fstab?

all that i am trying to do is backup the vms on esxi host to usb disk…thanks in advance

there is a dir called usbdrv, tried cp of vmdk file here but failed

Best Answer

First of all I don't think you can on ESXi, unless you are in unsupported mode. I have done it on ESX a few times, but the recommended way to backup the files from esxi are over the network, using the vSphere client. If at all possible go that route, it's much easier.

With that said. Format the disk with ext3 (You only have read support for NTFS, and FAT32 is not good with large files). Plug in the drive.

tail /var/log/dmesg

Should tell you the name of the drive. Create a mount point and mount it, specifying the correct fs

mkdir /mnt/usb
mount /dev/<device_name> /mnt/usb -t ext3

You will probably have to use vmkstools to export the files.

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