My Own ESXi Server Part 7 Browsing the VMware ESXi Datastore

What is the VMware ESXi Datastore?  Just like the file system in Windows, VMware use datastores to store ISO images, virtual machines, and floppy images.  One physical storage system datastores can reside on is your local disk.  On my ESXi server, I connected a new 1.5 TB SATA disk.  When I booted ESXi for the first time, I noticed that the datastore was immediately available.

****Whenever your ESXi server sees a blank disk (i.e. no partition table or partitions), it will automatically formatted with VMFS for immediate use.  If you are using a logical volume manager ESXi server may also local LVM to be reformatted.  If you are not using regular partitioning scheme, you should make sure your have the proper backups!****

Below I cover 2 different ways on how to browse and use the datastore:
1)  Browsing datastore with a web browser
2)  Accessing datastore using vSphere Client Datastore Browser.

Browsing Datastore with a Web Browser

1)  Using a web browser, go to url http://[ip address of ESXi server].  In my example I will to to http://192.168.1.10.

2)  Under the heading Web-Based Datastore Browser, click the Browse datastores in this host's inventory link.

3)  You will be prompted for User Name and Password.  Enter and click OK.

4)  You will now see a list of all your datastores.  You can now click the datastore you are interested in browsing further.

5)  You can distinguish a directory and a file by looking at the size field.  If it is a directory, there will be no size.  In addition, the name of the directory will have a "/" appended to it.

6)  Using the web-based datastore browser, you can only view and download files.  You cannot upload into the datastore.

Accessing Datastore using vSphere Client Datastore Browser

1) Start the vSphere Client.

2)  Switch to the Summary tab.  You will see all the datastores listed.  In the example there is only one called datastore1.  Select datastore and right-click and select Browse Datastore.

3)  You will now see the contents of the datastore.  From here you can browse the datastore, upload and download files to the datastore.

4)  NOTE:  I initially used the functions here to upload ISOs of different operating systems into the datastore.  When I tried to use these ISO files to create VMs, I encountered some weird problems.  It all led me to believe that I had corrupted files.  As a result, I needed to find an alternate way to upload my ISO files. I will cover this in my next post.

Related Posts:
Part 1  The Time Has Come
Part 2  Running ESXi on VMware Fusion
Part 3  Building My ESXi Server
Part 4  Installing ESXi 4 on a USB Stick
Part 5  Installing vSphere Client on Windows
Part 6  Updating ESXi using vSphere Host Update Utility
Part 7  Browsing the VMware ESXi Datastore
Part 8  WinSCP to the Rescue
Part 9  Creating a VM
Part 10  Downloading a Virtual Machine

***Updated March 26th 2010
I have decided to continue the series with at least the following:

Part 11  Running vSphere Client from Ubuntu
Part 12  Running vSphere Client from Mac OS
Part 13  Adding/Removing a VM to ESXi
Part 14  Export in ESXi
Part 15  Deploying OVF Templates
Part 16  Adding a License Key