Moving VM from ESXi to ESX

[jman177]

We are looking at moving a VM machine from ESXi to ESX is there any problems with copying & pasting the VM folder over to ESX?

(Eg. Are the vm images from ESXi compatible with ESX)

[admin]

perform a V2V conversion using VMware converter. that's a safe process. yes they should be compatible even if its a ESXi or ESX

[jman177]

Thanks for your ultra fast response.

The problem is that the ESXi server is in a completely different office location than the ESX & I don't want to move a heavy server out of the data centre & drive it from Location A to Location B.

Does anyone else or yourself have had any experience with going into "datastore1" on ESXi & selecting "Browse Datastore" & copying the VM folder to a USB device or laptop then restoring it to ESX Sever.

(I know that doing this will change a Thin Provision to a Thick Provision)

If there is another way that is guaranteed to work I would also like to know?

[admin · Accepted solution]

Convert the vm into ovf and save it on usb. Deploy the ovf vm from the other host

[aravinds3107]

As suggested by AakashJ the best option would be to export the VM as OVF and copy the data to External USB drive and import them on the new site.

But would like to know why you want to move from ESX to ESXi? As from ESXi is only platform available from 5.x

And which version of ESXi are you running and what is the version of ESX? Make sure both version are same as you will have Virtual Hardware compatibility error if you move from higher to lower version

[jman177]

Thanks for the responses.

You have it around the wrong way we are moving from ESXi v5.0 to ESX v5.0

Sorry forgot to add that version I was moving from :smileysilly:

So is AakashJ  method still the best method in this situation?

[admin]

There is no ESX version 5...Please check

[admin]

Yes Sir the method is general irrespective of ESX versions.. mark my answer as helpful or correct. 🙂

[aravinds3107]

we are moving from ESXi v5.0 to ESX v5.0

As i have mentioned before there is no ESX version from vSphere 5.x