VMWare 2 to ESXi 4.1 newbie questions

[GregCPX]

Hello guru's:

Just a couple of newbie questions....

I see that VMWare ESXi now supports USB pass-through, so I'm rather excited to ditch VMWare Server 2 and move to ESXi. Here is where I need just a bit of guidance.

I have 1 server, running Windows Server 2008 64 bit with VMWare Server 2. I'm not so concerned with saving the Windows 2008 base O/S, but I do have 4 guests. 1 Windows 2003, 2 windows xp and 1 CentOS Linux.

I'm curious, how should I go about converting these to ESXi? I know there is a converter, but here are my questions (keep in mind that I've not used the converter before)

1. Do I install the converter on the base Windows 2008 system and convert?

2. Do I install the converer on a remote PC and some how convert the guests while they are live?

3. Do I convert these and store the files and import them onto the new ESXi server via the client?

4. Do they convert well? I can reinstall everything but don't want to.

5. Should I remove the guests from the domain before I do this or any other helpful suggestions you might have?

Any helpful advice, tips, tricks would be appreciated!

[TAE]

The good news is the current converter application is nearly foolproof to where even a guy like me can be successful. You can download the application here: http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

If I were in your shoes:

1) Yep - I'd install the converter application on the Windows 2008 server hosting the virtual machines. This is based on the fact that when you run convertor and you select your source type to be "VMware Workstation or other VMware virtual machine", you'll have the opportunity to browse to the image location.

2) While I've not worked with the VMware Server product, I do know that physical servers convert just fine while live (hot); I migrated seven physical servers this way, so I can't see why a virtual machine would be any different.

3) The conversion process is non-destructive - your source will be "imaged" and copied to its new home on the ESXi host.

4) Do they convert well? "Flawless" comes to mind; I didn't have to reinstall a thing.

5) Removal from the domain is not required. Essentially, you shut the source down, and when you start the new (destination) server up, it wakes up thinking it has all this new cool hardware to use.

Some quick thoughts:

- before you convert the servers, clean up any needless (temporary) files on the source. The less you have to copy, the faster the conversion.

- once the new server is online, has the new VMware tools installed, has been rebooted successfully, you'll want to remove the "Ghost" devices that the OS is still holding onto (just in case they come back). Here's a link that details the process somewhat. A search for "remove ghost devices vmware" should aslo yield some helpful results.

Hopefully this made sense. I'm certainly not a guru, so perhaps another regular to the community will respond with their thoughts.

[GregCPX]

Thank you for the reply, but there is one question that I have.

You said "The conversion process is non-destructive - your source will be "imaged" and copied to its new home on the ESXi host.". My problem is that the VMWare Server 2 I want to convert from is the same hardware I will have to reformat and instal ESXi on, so I'm not sure there is a way for the converter to "image copy the source to a new home. What do I do in this case?

-G

[TAE]

Ah, this does complicate things a little. Because there is no "upgrade path" from VMware Server and ESXi in the conventional sense, you're going to (still) need at least two systems - one to hold your virtual machine images, and the system that will host the ESXi installation. Since you want to use the current server as the new ESXi host, you're first going to need to copy your VM images to a new location with sufficient storage - this can be another file server, or some sort of network (CIFS, for example) storage.

Once copied - you may want to run a hash program against the files in order to verify the copy got everything right - you can then install ESXi on your host. From there, it's a matter of running the converter against the VM files you copied to the alternate store.

Please bear in mind that this is pure theory on my part; I've not actually done what you're looking to do, but it's my belief that this should work. Given your situation, I'd try to find an idle server with which to perform a couple tests. I'd really hate to have you lose your VM's because I missed a step or process.

What I am certain of is that you will need to have a source and destination server - you can't do everything in place on one host.

Hope this helps.

-Todd

[GregCPX]

I was afraid of that...

was hoping the converter would take the guest, convert it, save it to a file system and then I could import it back...but that was a no go

Thanks for the help though!