How do you create a shared folder to the host using vSphere?

Question

VMWare player and workstation has the ability to easily create a shared folder directly to the host:

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/ws_running_shared_folders.html

This feature seems to be missing or is moved in vSphere. How do you set it up in vSphere?

Thanks.

Solution 1

This feature doesn't make sense with vSphere, which is why you can't find it.

Workstation, Player, Server all run on top of a "host OS" while ESX (vSphere managed) runs on bare-metal. You're not supposed to have access to the native file system on the host - so there is no option to do so.

Solution 2

Actually, we can't have shared folders using ESXi. But we can workaround it by creating a folder in the host datastore and copying files from/to it using scp protocol. Of course, you need to have administrative privileges on the host for that.

This link explains how to set up SSH Server and Shell Access on ESXi: http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vcli.migration.doc_50%2Fcos_upgrade_technote.1.4.html