2 vmdk management questions/issues

[HankVonHelvete]

trying to get advice on the following:

• Can I safely copy vmdks/virtual to a network target (not on my SAN, but a simple NAS we use for backup) ? Will i be able to move them back onto my SAN and power them on again? I noticed that when I move them off my SAN storage, the files get named "XXXX-flat.vmdk"

• Is it feasible to attach a new OS vmdk to existing vmdk data drives? Case in point. We have a virtual server with 1x vmdk running the OS(08r2) and 8x vmdks making up the data portion of the server. Can we install a new Windows 2012 server vmdk and re-attach the 8x data vmdks ?

[weinstein5]

• Can I safely copy vmdks/virtual to a network target (not on my SAN, but a simple NAS we use for backup) ? Will i be able to move them back onto my SAN and power them on again? I noticed that when I move them off my SAN storage, the files get named "XXXX-flat.vmdk"

Yes you can remember the virtual dis is comprised of two file *.vmdk and *-flat.vmdk - -flat.vmdk is what contains the actual virtual disk data - the .vmdk file contains the configuration information about the disk - you will need to capture both files -

• Is it feasible to attach a new OS vmdk to existing vmdk data drives? Case in point. We have a virtual server with 1x vmdk running the OS(08r2) and 8x vmdks making up the data portion of the server. Can we install a new Windows 2012 server vmdk and re-attach the 8x data vmdks ?

Yes you can -