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AaronYork
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Best way to import a new VM?

Hi all, I used the standalone converter application to convert a .tib SCO Unix image to a VM and automatically transfer it to the ESXi 5 server. An 8GB image, took 6 hours.

Strange I thought, so I ran the converter again on the same file but this time just saved it locally on the same Windows machine the converter was on, it took 15 minutes. So for some reason it takes ages and ages to transfer to the ESXi 5 server.

Is there a faster way to transfer it over? I'm going to do it live soon (testing at the moment) and having the server offline for that long seems unreasonable. Is there a way to manually copy the converted VM over first, then add it to the inventory? I'm a little bit new to this!

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a_p_
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Did you use VMware Converter 5 with the server option installed?

In this case take a look at e.g. Re: Poor transfer rate using Converter 5.0 Standalone compared to 4.3 for how to speed up the Converter by disabling SSL encryption to see whether this changes anything.

André

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a_p_
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Did you use VMware Converter 5 with the server option installed?

In this case take a look at e.g. Re: Poor transfer rate using Converter 5.0 Standalone compared to 4.3 for how to speed up the Converter by disabling SSL encryption to see whether this changes anything.

André

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continuum
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You have a SCO image ?

Then I highly recommend not to use Converter at all. SCO is very picky !!!

Instead use the Acronis tool that created the image in the first place.

With a SCO image the decision to use IDE or SCSI is crucial. So think about this carefully.
Once you made up your mind create the VM yourself and boot it into the Acronis LiveCD and then restore the tib from a network share.

Do not allow Converter to ever touch the VM. I had no luck converting a rworking SCO VM from WS to ESXi with Converter ...

Just curious - is that SCO 3 ? - if you manage to import that into a ESXi VM would you mind and post a short howto later ?


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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AaronYork
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Thanks guys, I'll give the SSL disable a go. I've tested the solution in a test environment I just want to get the timing down for the day I do it properly.

Basically I've already done it fully (although will someone elses help to fix the hard drive driver). I used an Acronis live CD to create a .tib image, then used the Windows standalone Converter to take the image and convert (without changing any 'original' settings I think, although I with upped the RAM later) plus send it over to the ESXi server (this is where it just took 6 hours) and using the blc driver that was in a few how to's (that part I got someone else to do, took a couple of hours of tinkering).

Boots fine and then for the network driver as it is SCO OpenServer 5.0.5 it doesn't auto detect and so far I haven't found a driver, but I got an old 3Com card (similar if not the same that was in the orginal physical box) and told ESXi to pass the PCI device through to that VM, and then SCO auto detected it just fine.

EDIT: After setting SSL to false the process only took 11min over gigabit!!!! Awesome!

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