Moving VM from ESX 3.5 to ESXi 4.1

[SKNair]

I have a situation wherein I have a VM in a vCenter 2.5.4 with ESX 3.5 hosts and I need to migrate it to vcenter 4.1 update 3 with ESXi 4.1 hosts.

Other than shutting down the VM and locally copying it to the new vCenter, do we have any other method?

Another query I have is regarding licences.  I have the above ESX 3.5 hosts with 4 CPU licence.  Is there anyway I can upgrade the licence of the ESX 3.5 hosts from 4 to 8 ?

Regards,

Sunil

[Virtualinfra]

Is there anyway I can upgrade the licence of the ESX 3.5 hosts from 4 to 8 ?

check with vmware licensing team (call vmware support and go to licensing, query).

SKNair wrote:

I have a situation wherein I have a VM in a vCenter 2.5.4 with ESX 3.5 hosts and I need to migrate it to vcenter 4.1 update 3 with ESXi 4.1 hosts.

Other than shutting down the VM and locally copying it to the new vCenter, do we have any other method?

Option1: (test this before bit older).

Present a new common datastore between esx3.5 and esxi4.1, migrate from esx3.5 to that common datastore,( if the esx 3.5 are still on virtual center 2.5 then make sure you have install stroage vmotion pulgin for esx3.5 and you need downtime to move the vm from current storage datastore to common storage, ) then do a vmotion from esx3.5 to esxi4.1, if they are in same vcenter4.1 and cluster.

If they are in different vcenter4.1 after migrating to common datastore, shutdown the vm and remove from inventory from esx3.5 and go esxi4.1, browse the common datastore and register there, then power on the vm.

Option 2: (test this)

present the datastore presented to esx3.5 to esxi4.1 and do a vmotion from esx3.5 to 4.1 if they are in on the same vc.

If they are in different vcenter4.1 after migrating to common datastore, shutdown the vm and remove from inventory from esx3.5 and go esxi4.1, browse the common datastore and register there, then power on the vm.

[aravinds3107]

Welcome to the Communities

Other than shutting down the VM and locally copying it to the new vCenter, do we have any other method?

1) If your datastore is shared with both ESX 3.5 and ESXi 4.1 host, Shutdown the VM and remove from inventory from ESX 3.5, Add the VM on ESXi 4.1 and Upgrade VMware tools and virtual hardware and start using the VM

2) If you are running ESX 3.5 U5 you can add the host to vCenter 4.1 and them migrate the VM to ESXi 4.1 and Upgrade VMware tools and virtual hardware and start using the VM

3) Use VMware Converter to migrate the VM to ESXi 4.1

[NotANumber · Accepted solution]

I would use VMware free VM Converter v5. Run it from the VM you want to move. it's really easy and quick to use. I have used to migrate 4 machines from esxi3.5 to esxi5 with no issues.

It can be found here:

https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/info?slug=infrastructure_operations_management/vmware_vcenter_con...

[SKNair]

Thanks to everyone. I think using the Converter would be the easiest as the datastore is not shared one.