Copying VMs between vCenter's

[ras2a]

We want to copy all VMs from old ESX4 Hosts to new ESXi 5 Hosts. As I see it, we have several options:

1) Copy .vmx, .vmdk files and register on new hosts

2) use vCenter Converter (VM to VM) to transfer VMs to new Hosts

Anyone have experience of using vCenter Converter (standalone) and is it any good?

Thanks folks

[dkraut]

As long as the two hosts are on the same network, converter usually works fine.  Try to keep all the default settings when using converter.   Changing settings upfront increases chances of failures and strange happenings.

[aravinds3107]

You use vCenter converter and perform V2V conversion.

Alternativey you can add the ESXi 4.1 host to vCenter 5 and move the VM's to ESXi 5 hosts Or if you share the datastore to ESXi 5 host, you can just unregister , Power OFF VM;s from ESXi 4.1 and register the VM's to ESXi 5 hosts

[WessexFan]

You could add the 4.1 hosts to the 5.x vCenter (backward compatible) and then just migrate the vms over and then use Update Manager to upgrade the tools to match the host. If you have a cluster, you will want to disable EVC is the 5 hosts are on better processors.

Converter is a very good product. I miss the 4.1 plugin

[ras2a]

Thanks folks - great answers

[ras2a]

Ended up simply using Veeam FastSCP - was quick and simply copy and paste