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alhall
Contributor
Contributor

Importing/Exporting GSX to ESX

I currently have a GSX server that is IDE and I would like to import/export to ESX 2.5. Can this be done? What is the basic steps for this. Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks!!

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jason_farrow
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

You cannot take any VMs that use IDE disks and migrate them to ESX Server. On ESX Server 2.5.x only SCSI VM disks are supported.

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GRedner
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

^^

VM Impoter 2 will replace IDE disks with SCSI disks when migrating to ESX, and modify the guest (Windows only) operating system to correctly identify and boot from the new disks. Importing other guest OSes to ESX will still result in SCSI disks, but the guest OS may have to be modified by hand to accept them.

To import from GSX to ESX 2.5, the server must be managed by VirtualCenter 2. To import to ESX 2.5, select the source VM's .vmx file as the source, and enter the VC server's IP address (or DNS name) as the destination, then select the desired ESX 2.5 host from the resulting page.

To import from ESX 2.5 to GSX, select the VC server's address as the source, then select the VM you want from the resulting list page. For the destination, choose the directory in which the imported VM should reside.

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Michelle_Laveri
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

The way I have done it - is using ghost... cloning the IDE drive to SCSI drive within workstation. Then copy the SCSI virtual disk to ESX and then import it into the VMFS partition

RegardsMike

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Michelle Laverick
@m_laverick
http://www.michellelaverick.com
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