Tips on exporting and importing a virtual machine

[hack3rcon]

Hello,
I have some questions:

1- What points should be considered to export a virtual machine and import it to another VMware ESXi host? For example, Should VMware Tools be removed before exporting a virtual machine?

2- Does exporting a virtual machine from VMware ESXi version 6.5 to VMware ESXi version 6.7 require special operations?

3- If the virtual machine that is to be exported and imported is Linux, is there a special point to be considered?

Thank you.

[markey165]

If Question 1 is the same as Quesion 2, and you're only going forwards from 6.5 to 6.7, this should be fairly straightforward for the VMs themselves in terms of compatibility. Use of RDMs and any VMs configured with pass through hardware are a couple of things to keep an eye on. If you are moving to a new cluster, affinity and anti-affinity rules, hosts and VM groups would need to be recreated.

Are you migrating storage as well? If you are using vVOLs and/or storage policies, those would be another thing to keep an eye on. Again if moving to a new cluster, you would need to migrate the storage policies or recreate them.

If Question 1 isn't the same as Question 2, and you were going from 6.7 to 4.1, then many more things like compatibility of VMware Hardware versions, VMware Tools, Fault Tolerant Enabled VMs and assigned hardware would be a few things to consider 

Access to the same Port Groups for non disruptive Cross vCenter vMotion between different hosts would also be required. HTH