Cloning an ESXi4 install

[robert_kelly]

Hi,

I have an ESXi 4 server PXE booting using a config bundle made with vicfg-cfgbackup.

This machine is working great.

I then thought I could clone the server by copying the config bundle to another ESXi instance, change the ip addresses and hostname, backup using vicfg-cfgbackup again and bring that up with the same configuration.

Bringing up the second cloned ESXi, I ran into NAS storage connection failures and the vSphere client would fail continuously to both the original and cloned ESXi servers.

Once I powered down the cloned ESXi, the original continued to work as before.

Is cloning an ESXi server configuration possible using this method?

What else needs to be changed on the server besides hostname and ip addresses to not have it 'clash' with the other?

Is it just a certificate issue?

Thanks,

Rob

[Gerrit_Lehr]

Well I would not recommend cloning ESX installation because you are likely to run into such problems. The better war would be to set up a new server and copy the configurations you need. It should not take any longer since ESXi installation is pretty simple.

Kind Regards,

Gerrit Lehr

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[robert_kelly]

Thanks for the response Gerrit.

Doesn't using vicfg-cfgbackup just backup the configuration?

The only thing 'cloned' is the configuration made from that utility.

You're right, setting up a new server from scratch would be better, but I'd like to know what 'state' or 'identity' variables in the configuration would cause these problems.

I'm guessing it's the license, uuid and/or certificate used.

[DSTAVERT]

One of the benefits to installing ESXi to USB flash is that it is simple to create several and have them ready for new installs, testing, etc. Shut down, pull out a 3.5i usb stick and pop in a 4.0 stick restart.

Re deploy in a flash so to speak.

If you don't have a VMA appliance or a RCLI system set up for configuration backup it is well worth it.

[DSTAVERT]

You can't clone a Windows machine and not have errors on the network. Hard drives end up with signatures and signatures don't clone.

[robert_kelly]

The benefit of PXE booting over USB sticks is that I don't have to manage sticks or any physical drives for that matter or need physical access to the machines.

Boot and configuration management can be done remotely.

I do have both the VMA appliance and the RCLI tools. I'm using vicfg-cfgbackup.pl from the RCLI.

Since all of my ESXi servers have identical base configurations as far as datastores and network cards, I was trying to make an ESXi base image configuration, then change the differing attributes like hostname and ip addresses of each for each server, saving those as new configuration backups for each ESXi server.

e.g.

1) Boot an ESXi

2) Configure it as config0 - configure data stores and networking.

3) Backup config0

4) Deploy another ESXi using config0

5) Alter the config changing hostname and ip addresses as appropriate

6) Backup altered config0 as config1

7) Boot another ESXi using config1

PROBLEM:

When ESXi is booted using config1, bad things happen like data stores (NFS) dropping and vSphere client connections dropping to both ESXi instances.

No, I didn't run both using the same ip addresses at once.

[DSTAVERT]

Totally missed PXE.

I don't know whether http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/#esxi_stateless might have some useful information