Converter Standalone extremely slow

[vakharia]

I have seen some posts on this community and elsewhere with regards to the speed at which Converter works. However most of these posts are from Year 2009.

I am using the latest Converter for Windows (4.0.1) on Windows 7 and trying to convert a VMWare Workstation disk to an ESXi 4.0 U2 disk.

The size of the image is about 10 GB.

I had started the conversion 48 hours ago and so far it has converted 14%. Estimated time remaining is 8 days.

Transfer rate is 20 KB/s.

I am sure there is something wrong.

Can someone suggest the best way to get this Workstation disk to run on ESXi (free version)?

[Stu_McHugh]

blimey that us slow! I'm not sure about your problem but I use a different method to import a workstation image.

copy your VMDK file to your VMFS volume attached to your ESX host. Once that's complete open up and putty session navigate to the folder you copied the image to. Once there use the VMKFStools command line to convert the workstatiion vmdk to an ESX vmd. something like this....

vmkfstools -i /servername/folder1/workstation.vmdk /servername/folder2/vmguestname.vmdk

Once it's complete create a new virtual machine. Call it exactly the same name as the folder (in this example 'Folder 2'), give it cpu, Ra, etc, then once you get to the HDD part click on the option to say you already have an VMDK file and navigate to it. OK a few time and then you're done.

I hope that makes sense.

Stuart

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[vakharia]

copy your VMDK file to your VMFS volume attached to your ESX host.

This copy itself is a problem for me. I am using FastSCP hoping that it performs better, but the copy process would give me a long ETA.

Can I copy this vmdk file onto a USB drive and then mount that (ext3 file system) on the ESXi host?

vmkfstools -i /servername/folder1/workstation.vmdk /servername/folder2/vmguestname.vmdk

Is vmkfstools installed by default? Or do I have to provide a path to the executable?

[Stu_McHugh]

I would expect USB to be slower than a file transfur. Maybe try Veeam's FastSCP?

vmkfstools is a standard tool in ESX without type the path

Stuart

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[vakharia]

With FastSCP I am getting a transfer speed of 102 KB/s.

I expect USB to work several times faster than this.

How do I mount my ext3 based USB drive in ESXi using the support console?

[Stu_McHugh]

I'm not sure about mounting a USB device on a ESXi server. If you did manage to copy it off perhaps you can try and copy it to your ESXi host from another machine?

Stuart

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[continuum]

AFAIK you can not mount USB-disks with ESXi.

I use this procedure to upload Workstation vmdks to ESXi

http://sanbarrow.com/uploadwstoesxi.html

Anyway - I think something in your network setup is wrong - Converter usually is not that slow.

When I convert a Win7 VM from Workstation to ESXi with a simialr size I am usually done in an hour or less

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VMX-parameters- WS FAQ -[ MOAcd|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VMDK-Handbook

[MattG]

It sounds like your network connection is slow. Double check your duplex settings. What is the NIC speed?

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[vakharia]

Using SCP, I was able to transfer files to the ESXi host with a speed of 12.8 MB/s. I am on 100 MBps network, but my server is on a GigaBit port.

[MattG]

So you were able to achieve 12.8/MBps using SCP from the Source to the Destination and Destination to the Source?

-MattG

[vakharia]

I have been using a Windows guest VM to transfer the file to the ESXi host so far.

Using WinSCP, I am getting a speed of 4 MB/s - much better compared to Datastore browser and FastSCP.

Using a physical Linux machine the transfer speed was even better at 12.8 MB/s

Hope that clarifies.