Mount external USB device in ESXi hypervisor

How to mount an external USB drive in an ESXi hypervisor for host access. I highly recommend using a new, large disk (depending on your requirements) which will be formatted using VMFS/VMFS6.

1. Stop USB service

[root@esxi:~] /etc/init.d/usbarbitrator stop
watchdog-usbarbitrator[2101796]: Terminating watchdog process with PID 2098419
stopping usbarbitrator...
usbarbitrator stopped

1. Connect external USB drive to ESXi host (in this example we're using a 32GB SanDisk USB)

[root@esxi:~] vdq -q
      "Name"     : "mpx.vmhba35:C0:T0:L0",
      "VSANUUID" : "",
      "State"    : "Ineligible for use by VSAN",
      "Reason"   : "Has partitions",
      "IsSSD"    : "0",
"IsCapacityFlash": "0",
      "IsPDL"    : "0",
      "Size(MB)" : "29340",
    "FormatType" : "512n",
   "IsVsanDirectDisk" : "0"
   }

1. Format entire external drive using vmkfstools

[root@esxi:~] vmkfstools -C vmfs6 -S MyVolume /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba35:C0:T0:L0:1
create fs deviceName:'/dev/disks/mpx.vmhba35:C0:T0:L0:1', fsShortName:'vmfs6', fsName:'MyVolume'
deviceFullPath:/dev/disks/mpx.vmhba35:C0:T0:L0:1 deviceFile:mpx.vmhba35:C0:T0:L0:1
ATS on device /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba35:C0:T0:L0:1: not supported
.
Checking if remote hosts are using this device as a valid file system. This may take a few seconds...
Scanning for VMFS-6 host activity (4096 bytes/HB, 1024 HBs).
Creating vmfs6 file system on "mpx.vmhba35:C0:T0:L0:1" with blockSize 1048576, unmapGranularity 1048576, unmapPriority default and volume label "MyVolume".
Successfully created new volume: 66909728-dd72c566-8a2f-3cecef04e91c

1. Check volume is mounted and accessible

[root@esxi:~] ls -lah /vmfs/volumes/
<snip>
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          35 Jul 12 02:39 MyVolume -> 66909728-dd72c566-8a2f-3cecef04e91c

1. Check you can read/write to mounted volume

[root@esxi:~] echo "32GB" > /vmfs/volumes/MyVolume/something.txt
[root@esxi:~] cat /vmfs/volumes/MyVolume/something.txt
32GB

1. To mount your VMFS volume/disk on Linux, read this https://www.iblue.team/esxi-forensics/esxi-vmfs-exploration

Note: if you receive an error similar to the following, you need to specify the actual partition you're intending to format (mpx.vmhba35:C0:T0:L0:1 instead of mpx.vmhba35:C0:T0:L0)

Failed to create VMFS on device mpx.vmhba35:C0:T0:L0
/dev/disks/mpx.vmhba35:C0:T0:L0: Permission denied.  (Have you set the partition type to 0xfb?)
Error: Permission denied