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jbalakaruppiah
Contributor
Contributor

I have shared drive (separate VMDK file) on one of VM, that need to move to another vm which hosted in another ESX server. Both are having local datastore. Please provide the steps or procedure.

I have shared drive (separate VMDK file) on one of VM, that need to move to another vm which hosted in another ESX server. Both are having local datastore. Please provide the steps or procedure.

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rcporto
Leadership
Leadership

Here are some high level steps:

1) on the source virtual machine make sure remove any existing snapshot;

2) remove the virtual disk from the virtual machine, but make sure to do not select the "remove from the disk" option;

3) copy the virtual disk from one host to another using SCP or WinSCP;

3) add the virtual disk to the destination virtual machine.

Take a look at the following KB for additional considerations: Moving or copying virtual disks in a VMware environment (900) | VMware KB

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Richardson Porto
Senior Infrastructure Specialist
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/richardsonporto
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a_p_
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Leadership

Alternatively to what rcporto‌ posted (especially if you are using thin provisioned virtual disks), you may - after completing the first two steps - create a dummy VM to which you add the existing virtual disk, export it as an OVF/OVA, and import it again on the target host. Then detach the virtual disk from the dummy VM, move it to the target VM's folder (optional), rename the virtual disk using vmkfstools -E source_name.vmdk target_name.vmdk (optional), and attach it to that target VM. Please ensure that you use a target file name that doesn't already exist!

André

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Baoyin
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Is it possible to Storage vMotion the VM with the shared drive to another ESX host?

If possible then after SVM, detach the vmdk from the original VM and then add it to the VM you desired should be fine.

If not, create a dummy VM and attach the VMDK to it and SVM it to another ESX host and do the same detach and attach.

Hope it help you.

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