Does Converter also transfer existing REDO files?

[DCLewis]

Hi everyone, I've got a situation with VMWare converter that I need some advice on before proceeding.

I have a GSX server hosting a Windows server that has a 50 Gb virtual drive. Unfortunately, we applied a snapshot 11 months ago and therefore we also now have a 52 Gb REDO file that we need to remove so we can apply the changes to the virtual disk. To further complicate the issue, the REDO file is growing quickly and will soon consume all of the remaining drive space on the GSX server. Therefore, we don't have enough drive space remaining to apply the snapshot, as I understand remaining hard drive space must be at least equal to the hard drive file plus the REDO file for this operation to complete successfully.

One solution proposed is to use VMWare converter to move the virtual machine to one of our ESX servers which has plenty of available resources to host this server. My question is whether or not the Converter program will move both the existing hard drive structure plus the changes in the REDO file, or if it will just process the VMDK file and not the information contained in the REDO?

If it only converts the existing VMDK file, is there any way I can manually move the REDO file to the ESX server and process it from there?

Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time.

[lholling]

Hi There

My best suggestion would be to shutdown the VM and then Ghost / Livestate / Acronis etc the server and then restore this into an ESX VM.

As you are already running it in VM Server there should really not be anything you need to change (providing that you are running it as a SCSI hard disk controller).

Leonard...

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[TomHowarth · Accepted solution]

Treat the machine a you would a phyiscal one and convert it. The running guest has no knowledge that it does not have a real HDD, once the conversion is complete you will have a running guest without the REDO/Snapshot files.

Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator

[DCLewis]

Thank you both for your replies.

I think that's the way forward, Tom. I should have thought of that myself, but I didn't think using the physical option on a virtual machine would work.

Thanks again.

[TomHowarth]

No worries, and wecome to the forums.

Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator