Specifications

CHAPTER 6 Using Disks in a Virtual Machine
177
Adding Drives to a Virtual Machine
A GSX Server virtual machine can use up to four IDE devices and up to seven SCSI
devices. Any of these devices can be a virtual hard disk or DVD or CD-ROM drive. A
virtual machine can read data from a DVD-ROM disc. GSX Server does not support
playing DVD movies in a virtual machine.
Many other SCSI devices can be connected to a virtual machine using the host
operating system’s generic SCSI driver. For details on connecting these devices, see
Connecting to a Generic SCSI Device on page 325.
The following sections describe how to add virtual disks, physical disks, DVD-ROM/
CD-ROM drives and floppy drives to virtual machines. In addition, you can connect
CD-ROM and floppy drives to disk image files.
• Adding Virtual Disks to a Virtual Machine on page 177
• Adding Physical Disks to a Virtual Machine on page 184
• Adding DVD-ROM or CD-ROM Drives to a Virtual Machine on page 187
• Adding Floppy Drives to a Virtual Machine on page 189
Adding Virtual Disks to a Virtual Machine
Virtual disks are stored as files on the host computer or on a network file server. It does
not matter whether the disk that holds the files is IDE or SCSI. A virtual IDE drive can be
stored on an IDE drive or on a SCSI drive. So can a virtual SCSI drive.
Use the virtual machine settings editor to add a new virtual disk to your virtual
machine. The virtual machine should be powered off before you begin. If it is not, shut
down the guest operating system normally, then click Power Off on the VMware
Virtual Machine Console toolbar.
Note: If you have a Windows NT 4.0 guest with a SCSI virtual disk, you cannot add
both an additional SCSI disk and an IDE disk to the configuration.
Adding a New Virtual Disk from the Console
1. Open the virtual machine settings editor (VM > Settings) and click Add. The Add
Hardware Wizard guides you through the steps to create your virtual disk. Click
Next to start configuring the virtual disk.
2. Click Hard Disk, then click Next.
3. Select Create a new virtual disk, then click Next.
4. Choose the type of virtual disk. The wizard recommends whether to use SCSI or
IDE, based on the guest operating system installed in the virtual machine.