Using ESX5 Vsphere as a staging server when host is on ESX4

[Stuart_Hurst]

Hi

I have a customer who has a licensed version of ESXi4 and a couple of servers.  We're having to move one of his servers onto our ESX server which is ESX5 and using the VSphere P2V tool to do this.  Is there going to be a problem when we need to P2V it back onto his ESX4 server?

Apologies if it's been asked before.

thanks

Stuart

[vMario156]

Make sure that you are not upgrading the virtual hardware to version 8 (which was introduced with vSphere 5.0). Otherwise there is no problem between VM movements between vSphere 4.x and vSphere 5.0.

Regards,

Mario

[Stuart_Hurst]

Is that something that is set in the VMWare converter to not occur or something you have to do post P2V within ESX 5? I see below the edit settings on the VMWare client, that there is now a Upgrade hardware entry, but this machine is currently still off as the p2v is occurring.

Thanks for the response Mario

[AndreTheGiant]

You do not VMware Converter.

If you have vCenter Server just use migrate. Otherwise you can copy the files (for example with FastSCP) and then add the vmx to the inventory.

[Stuart_Hurst]

A quick search found the answer - Using P2V converter, during the conversion wizard, there's an option to use Hardware version 7 or 8.  I had selected version 8 which would have caused me problems, so I've cancelled the P2V, and then re-ran the wizard to use Version 7 only.

I also believe that there could be an issue when you upgrade VMWare tools too but as i was quickly scanning it, I can't remember.  I will manually upgrade VMware tools later if it's necessary.