Virtualize a physical Linux server to a USB hard disk?

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Linux

server

USB

Hello! :-D

My first post and question here...

I've been reading your forums for looooong time and I've been impressed on how they work.

I have a question that it seems to be trickier than it should:

I'm in charge of virtualizing a Linux server (RHEL5) into a virtual machine.

By now I've got the VMWARE converter installed in the linux server and in a Windows desktop and I've tried to convert the machine locally and remotely as it would be done in a windows computer. No luck on that as I need the ESX environment to do it.

I've installed the ESXi 4 into a spare computer and plugged a 1TB USB hard disk that should be the place were the data should be inserted in.

After making all the set ups the ESX server is running fine and the Linux box can see the ESX server and start the virtualization process.

The only problem that I've found is that I can't use the 1TB USB HDD as it is not detected by the ESX server...

Any idea?

I would accept using other products in order to make the P2V process, but I have run out of ideas...

I've searched information in the internet Bing, Yahoo and Google and some people tells that it is possible to get the USB drives to work into the ESX environment but I've not been able to do it...