Moving VMs to ESXi

[Stewart_Hyde]

Hi

I am new to ESXi, having been only using ESX up until now.

I want to move some VMs from our ESX farm to a standalone ESXi server. The VMs are used for test/dev and I want to free up some space on our ESX servers and shared storage.

What is the best method to do so please?

Thanks

[VMRane · Accepted solution]

You can either use the stand alone convertor or FASTSCP to move them.

[f10]

If you are using vCenter 4.x and ESX 4.x add the ESXi host to vCenter and then select the VM > Migrate > Change Host and Datastore. FYI, VM needs to be powered off and a block level copy of the VM would be done on the destination host and datastore over LAN so the speed of copy would depend on the bandwidth available.

[Stewart_Hyde]

Wouldn't this require additional licensing?

[ab_lal]

After Migrating the VM's to ESXi 4, upgrade VM Tools first on the VM and then upgrade VMware Virtual Hardware.

[f10]

Yes, Storage VMotion comes requires Enterprise or Enterprise Plus license OR an evaluation license.

http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/vsphere_purchaseoptions.html

You may use WinSCP to copy over the Virtual Machine folder from one datastore to another, you would have to enable SSH on the ESXi host. Follow this thread http://communities.vmware.com/thread/174315 for all the details.

I hope this information is useful.