VMWARE ESXi 4.1 to ESXi 6.0

[padair]

I have a client that was running the free ESXi 4.1 and has 3 production VMs on it.

I recently upgraded their hardware and have a new hardware with paid essentials license.  The host is setup with ESXi 6.0 and there is an vCenter appliance VM on it.

I tried adding the 4.1 host to the vCenter and it says it doesn't support ESXi 4.1.  I downloaded VMware converter and shutdown one of the VM's and tried to convert it to the new host but after putting in the 4.1 root credentials and selecting the shutdown VM it says "Unable to obtain hardware information" and it won't convert

I tried googling and searching and really can't find much that will help in either situation I tried above.

How can I get VM's on a standalone ESXi v4.1 system to a new 6.0 system???  It shouldn't be this hard...

thx, Paul.

[rcporto]

Already checked this KB article: VMware KB: Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone fails with...  ?

[Supra2JZGTE]

Are you able to follow the upgrade path for 4.1 to 5.0 on the 4.1 host?  If so, try it.   Getting the old host on a newer hypervisor version may at minimum allow you to upgrade the hardware version and then let you either run converter against it or even vMotion it off that host.

[ZenithVM]

Upgarde your first ESXi4.1 to 5.x level. upgrade the hardware version of the VMs and then try to migrate them to the new ESX6.0. If you manage to upgrade the ESX to 5.5 level you can directly attach the same ESX to the vcenter server appliance and migrate the VMs.

[RichardBush]

Hi,

Which version of convertor are you using ? Are you able to upload the log bundle please.

Rich