How to Add External HDD to Virtual Machine and Make Datastore in vSphere ESXi 6

Hi my friend, this time I will share my experience when I get a storage problem on an enlarged server, here I use an alternative that is to make an external hdd into a datastore on a vm.

Preparation

• Prepare 1 external hard drive, here I use the hard drive with the My Passport brand. 
• Plug your external hard disk into the server where the storage swells it.
• Enable SSH in VM

Enable SSH in VM

Configure

Login SSH with Putty to VM

check status usbarbitrator

/etc/init.d/usbarbitrator status

stop service usbarbitrator

/etc/init.d/usbarbitrator stop

check status and stop usbarbitrator

Check hard drive

ls /dev/disks/

Write the GPT label to your USB device using the ID you get:

partedUtil mklabel /dev/disks/t10.WD______My_Passport_2626WXL1AA96RUX0____  gpt

Calculate the end sector for your new partition from the resulting numbers from the following command:

partedUtil getptbl /dev/disks/t10.WD______My_Passport_2626WXL1AA96RUX0____  gpt

eval expr $(partedUtil getptbl /dev/disks/t10.WD______My_Passport_2626WXL1AA96RUX0____ | tail -1 | awk '{print $1 " \\* " $2 " \\* " $3}') - 1

Create VMFS partition using the number you calculated (end sector), the start sector (2048) and the VMFS GUID.

partedUtil setptbl /dev/disks/t10.WD______My_Passport_2626WXL1AA96RUX0____  gpt "1 2048 3906959804 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 0"

Format your new partition with VMFS6

vmkfstools -C vmfs6 -S External-Storage /dev/disks/t10.WD______My_Passport_2626WXL1AA96RUX0____:1

Format your new partition with VMFS6

Trying

Try going to the vSphere dashboard, and looking at storage, is there any additional datastore that we created earlier.

Try going to the vSphere dashboard