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timoelli
Contributor
Contributor
‎01-27-2023 08:16 AM

Copy VM From ESXI 5.5 to ESXI 7

Hello,

I know enough about VMware to be dangerous and I need to move working production Linux VMs from an ESXI 5.5 host to a new ESXI 7 host. A little downtime is not an issue. It doesn't seem like that would be too complex of an operation but I thought I'd check here first. Any assistance in finding the right resources would be greatly appreciated. There must be some documented steps somewhere to do this. 

Thanks, Tim

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7 Replies
scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee
‎01-27-2023 09:17 AM

Are either of the hosts being managed by vCenter Server? Is there any datastore shared between them?

 


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maksym007
Expert
Expert
‎01-27-2023 10:04 AM

What about the infrastructure you have? Versions of vCenter and ESXi? Do you have any cloud solutions? 

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lamw
Community Manager
Community Manager
‎01-27-2023 01:08 PM

While there are many options, especially when managed via vCenter Server

One of the easiest and most flexible option is to simply using VMware Converter, it is a free solution and does NOT care about licensing nor whether you've got shared storage and does host-to-host data transfer, so no need for intermediate data transfer to bastion client, which is helpful for large VMs. 

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timoelli
Contributor
Contributor
‎02-02-2023 05:21 AM

Hello and thanks for the reply, ESXI 7 is managed by vCenter Server. No shared datastore.

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timoelli
Contributor
Contributor
‎02-02-2023 05:35 AM

Hello and thank you for the reply, vCenter 7.0.3 and no cloud services.

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timoelli
Contributor
Contributor
‎02-02-2023 05:40 AM

Thank you for the reply. I have read most about this one. I feel like I will attempt this. It looks like I'd have to have the VM powered off and can copy it from my ESXi 5.5 host to my ESXi 7 host. If I attempt this and I am unsuccessful and for some reason cannot get my migrated VM running will I be able to restart the VM on the ESXI 5.5 host?

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timoelli
Contributor
Contributor
‎02-02-2023 07:11 AM

@lamw Oops, looks like just clicking reply is general and not attached to your reply...

Thank you for the reply. I have read most about this one. I feel like I will attempt this. It looks like I'd have to have the VM powered off and can copy it from my ESXi 5.5 host to my ESXi 7 host. If I attempt this and I am unsuccessful and for some reason cannot get my migrated VM running will I be able to restart the VM on the ESXI 5.5 host?

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