Copying/Moving VMs from an old ESXi 3.5 (free) to an ESXi 5.x in a vSphere infrastructure

[MariusRoma]

I have some old VMs hosted by an old ESXi (free) host.

I need to move the VMs to an ESXi host member of a vSphere infrastructure without losing the existing snapshot.

What is expected to happen if I simpli download the folder containing the VM from the old ESXi 3.5 datastore, upload it to the ESXi 5.0 datastore and register the VM?

Should i perform any kind of import/conversion?

Regards

marius

[ldelloca]

Hi Marius,

first of all, virtual machine from ESXi 3.5 (virtual hardware 4) are supported in vSphere 5.1, so there is no needed conversion.

About the move, as long as you move all the files contained in the datastore you should be fine, the important point is to not break the snapshot chain described in the pointer files, so you should do the copy directly from the command line (ssh for example) so you can see all the files, the datastore browser hides the pointer/flat files couple and shows you only one.

For your safety, copy files and remove the old one only when you are sure everything is working in the new ESXi.

Luca.

[aravinds3107]

Running the VM's created on ESXi 3.5 is supported on ESXi 5.x. After moving the VM's to ESXi 5.1 Make sure to upgrade VMware tools and Virtual Hardware version. If you are using VMware Standalone conveter for moving the VM's it will take care of upgrading virtual hardware during conversion process

If you are planning to perform copy of VM foldeter to datastore check Veeam FastSCP to perform the copy as it would faster

[ldelloca]

Wait, Veeam FastSCP is not supported on ESXi 5.1, and converter is going to copy only the last state of the VM, not the whole snapshot chain.

Rather he can use Veeam Backup Free Edition and run a File Copy job to preserve snapshots, but is not going to support a free ESXi like in this case. SCP via ssh seems to me still the best approach.

Luca.