Faster way to get VM's into ESXi Datastore?

[Gregg_Bishop]

I have two new PowerEdge 2950's both running ESXi 3.5 U3. One has 16 GB of RAM and 6x450 GB 15K RPM SAS drives on a PERC 6i (RAID 50), the other has 32 GB of RAM and 6x450 GB 15K RPM SAS drives on a PERC 6i (RAID 50) + 15x300 GB 15K SAS on a PERC 6e (MD1000, RAID 10).

I am doing P2V conversions on my workstation, verifying that everything works OK, and then transferring the completed machine into the ESXi datastore. I have a gigabit connection all the way to the servers, but I'm only getting around ~2.66 MB/s writing to the datastores. Copying even a 30 GB VM takes hours, & that was a small one. Is this normal and expected? Is there anything I can do to make this perform better? This calculation was done by using the datastore browser to check the current size of a VMDK and then clicking refresh one minute later. Subtract start from end, divide by 60, divide by 1024 = 2.66 MB/s.

The attached image is network utilization on my local workstation. The lowest section is writing to a single ESXi Datastore. The massive spike in the middle is what I can pull from any of our Windows servers (running on much lower powered hardware, particularly the storage arrays). The mid level is writing to the same ESXi Datastore while copying from a datastore on the second ESXi machine.

[continuum]

Do you use the datastorebrowser to upload the vmdks ?

Did you try winscp or VM explorer ?

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[s1xth]

How are you moving the completed VM's to the ESXi server?

I would just P2V the machine DIRECTLY to the ESX server. I know you want to check them first, but you could always check them by starting them up with the NIC disconnected on the ESX server. If you want to move the completed VM's from your workstation I would use SCP, I get 10MB/s on my laptop, which isnt amazing but works for me.

Only other thing I could say is the switching hardware between your workstation and the ESX servers causing the slowdown....(firmware up-to-date on everything?)

[Gregg_Bishop]

Yes I was using the datastore browser. My 100 GB upload finished overnight, when I get a chance I'll re-test for speed using the other methods. Hopefully one of them will be faster.

[adolopo]

Quick question: Have you confirmed that (speed) settings from the Source machine? Other than that, I lean towards P2V'ing directly to the HOST. Any other way would require a VMDK move (scp, veeam, etc) and then an import/conversion (Server to ESX). Might as well do it all in one swipe.

-D