DR test - taking 3 VMs and restoring on DR server

[paulfoel]

Current setup = One ESXi 5.1 host - 3 VMs.

DR setup = one Windows 2008 server (64Gb RAM, 2x quad CPU, plenty of disk)

What I want to be able to do is take the 3 VMs and get them working in virtual environment on the Windows 2008 server.

We could have installed ESXi on the DR server but, for some reason, we've got Windows 2008 now.

So I need to install something on top of this and import these VMs into this and get it all running.

At the moment, I'm in the process of cloning these VMs and exporting as OVA.

Any suggestions as to what to use and what issues I will face?

For the DR side, options are:-

VM Workstation (trial version)

Oracle VirtualBox

If we were to use one of these (experience is limited), would we still be able to 'network' these together and/or access from another laptop (plugged into switch that physical server is plugged into).

Or would it be easier to just blow Windows 2008 away and install ESXi on the DR server?

[Sateesh_vCloud]

I strongly recommend to install ESXi at DR site as lot of conversion process required to detect these VM's with other Hypervisor softwares.

[paulfoel]

What about VirtualBox?

Installing ESXi could be a problem...

[Sateesh_vCloud]

Try this one and make sure Networking is setup on Virtualbox as per ESXi at first site.

https://blogs.oracle.com/fatbloke/entry/migrating_from_vmware_to_virtualbox#Pre-migration