Moved Physical Hard Drives to new server

[EXITRF]

First before I offend anyone to badly, Yes there is a back-up. The "Extend reasons" why I would be willing to do this rough house style of upgrade is given below

Simple Explanation of Problem

I have moved the physical hard drives (6 drives in 0+1 array) from an HP Proliant ML350 G6 down to HP DL360 G5.

The hard drives boot and load VMware 4.0 but no Network connection. It shows the assigned static IP but no connection to the network.

Network cables tested too. 😉 Firmware up to date on both boxes

I upgraded the VMware 4.0 ESXi to HP Edition of VMware 5.1(1??) hypervisor, still no IP connection.

Any Suggestions to get this NIC running an IP address??

The Drive array does go back to the original system and boots with working IP (And upgrade to VMware 5.1 too)

Extended Reasons

This is a small business with a single physical server, we have borrowed a temporary (used) server from our supplier

The current Array (6 x 136 gb drives in 0+1 array) has 408 gb of useable space. The person that did the original load of the VMware/OS load did not increase the block size so the Windows Small Business 2008 server has a max volume of 320GB

Which is now max'd out.

The Goal is to have to Production server upgraded to (8 x 450 gb drives in 0+1 array) for 1.8 TB of usable space. Ideally the SBS 2008 will be migrated from the temporary server to the production server with Proper block sizes for larger volumes. The current SBS load has some corruption not related to VMware that would also gives reason why we do not want the original load on new drives in the production box.

Also this is a Exchange Server which is 7x24 critical to business I cannot knock down the server for more then 1 hour without repercussions.

The Back up exists but is not something convenient like a Veeam but is Microsoft Backup to iSCSI drive

[tomtom901]

Assign a new NIC to the VM and then reconfigure the IP settings? Then run the appropriate SBS wizards just to be sure.

[EXITRF]

OK I am spoiled, without the vSphere client access, how do I assign a new NIC to the Hypervisor?

Not even to the hosted VM yet

Simply cheat add a new NIC and pray (Shame I only have 10/100 around..) Wanted to use the onboard gig nic(s).

I did notice a reset command in the VMware GUI but did not know what this included. Did not want to wipe out the hosted VM's

I do not know the Linux/VMware CLI commands for access to change NIC's

[tomtom901]

I meant a new virtual nic to the virtual machine.

[masudhussain · Accepted solution]

Hi, what i would suggest to access this esxi host through DCUI and go to network configuration . If you will able to see the NICs then you can also assign IP address from there for management and also you can select NIC, which you want to assign for management purpose only .

Thanks,

hussain

[tomtom901]

Oh sorry, I misread. You can try reconfiguring it via DCUI indeed, or, install the standard version of VMware on an internal USB stick or something, see if that helps.

[a_p_]

Can I safely assume that the ESXi host configuration (e.g networking) is not very complex? In this case I'd go ahead, use an ESXi 5.1 installation CD and reinstall the ESXi host to straighten up the networking (MAC addresses mismatch). During installation make sure you select "Install ESXi, preserve VMFS". This will completely reinstall the host, detect its NICs and provide a clean system, but leave the VMFS datastore untouched. After configuring the settings (ESXi host name, networking, NTP, ...) open the datastore browser and re-register the VMs by right clicking their .vmx files. Since you are now on ESXi 5.x you should see the option to upgrade to VMFS5 when you select your datastore. VMFS5 will allow virtual disk sizes of up to ~2TB regardless of the block size.

If you are unsure or have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

André

[EXITRF]

Right on, Got to Site last night was able to move them and reset the NIC at the VMware interface.

Thank you very much

Now on to the rest of the adventure, rebuilding SBS

[EXITRF]

Thank you for the back up plan too, I was much more comfortable having a strong plan B in place when I was back on site. masudhussain suggested the NIC reset at the GUI first So I gave him the "correct answer click" but your is also right. It was what I was thinking I might have to do but nice to have more experienced advise say it was the way to go.

P.S. Thank to Tom too for the input, trust me I have misread given data more then once too 😉