Efficient / Best way to P2V then V2V ...

[gkpyeung]

Hi,

I tried the below....

(1) Install the Standalone VMWare Convertor on a site office Windows 2012 server and perform a P2V (takes around an hour), I then bring in back the .vmdk to office and using the Standalone VMWare Convertor to convert it/direct import it back to our ESXi server, it takes 2 to 3 days.... (the vmdk size is around 37.4GB)

(2) Install the Standalone VMWare Convertor on a site office Windows 7 professional wks and perform a P2V (takes around 45 minutes), I then bring in back the .vmdk to office and COPY the .vmdk direct to the ESXi datastore and add it to the inventory. It failed when first start it up "Module DevicePowerOn power on failed. Unable to create virtual SCSI device for scsi0:0,'/vmfs/volumes/6465465-464654-464654-464654/abcde.vmdk' Failed to open disk scsi0:0: unsupported or invalid disk type 7. Ensure that the disk has been imported" then I make it zeroedthick via SSH (takes around 20 minutes) but ended up, cannot hock up the VM....

Do you have any advise on how to do this... please ...

[cykVM]

Hi,

I would prefer method (1) for a P2V conversion. But does it really take 2 to 3 days or was that a typo?

Method (2) won't work this way, because the format of the converted vmdk is wrong for use with ESXi, see KB VMware KB: A virtual machine fails to power on with the error: Unsupported and/or invalid disk type

cykVM

[Prakas]

My guess is you don't have an ESX cluster setup in remote site (If you have one, P2V your server to that cluster, then download the whole bunch of files(vmx,vmdk,..) from datastore to USB drive, bring the USB drive to main office, upload the files to datastore and register/power on the VM).

Follow this way :-  Using Standalone converter P2V your server to USB as a Workstation machine, ship USB drive to Main office, do a V2V of your workstation machine (point to files in USB drive) to your ESX cluster. Now the VM should work without any issues.

[continuum]

In option 2 you use Converter twice - that is not really necessary - it is just the easiest way.
You can create the first P2V job so that it already creates a ESXi compatible format.
Or you load an additional module on ESXi to be able to convert the vmdk to ESXi compatible format with vmkfstools.

Advantage of first way: you do not need additional space on VMFS to convert a second time - but have to move a larger file through network.
Advantage of the second way - small vmdk can be copied over network but you need free space on a datastore to do the second conversion.

I use a completely different approach to do the same in just one step - I do not use Converter for the copy action at all and instead use iSCSI for the transport.
This way I can start the process with the patching drivers-step and only when that is done successfully I start to move the data( via iscsi)

A bit advanced to setup but very good for P2V actions that otherwise may take to long to be finished during a weekend.