Clone ESX server

[-stijn-]

We do have serveral (+/- 16) Blade BL25p ESX servers and we need to install 8 new ones. The hardware is the same ... can I just unplug one disk from an existing server and put it into a new one (so that I avoid the installation and customization).

We tested kickstart a few times, but the Blades do not have floppy disk drives and USB wasn't working properly.

I will have to change the hostname, IP adress, I guess MAC address.

Is there anything else I should take into account?

Thanks.

[Joop_van_Buuren]

Stijn,

Did you receive any reply. What i did a couple of month ago with our BL 480c is the following:

Take out one of the raid 1 disks from a configured ESX server ( which is powerdowned, maybe even in maintenance mode,which means it has to be free of running VM's) Take out one of the disks of the new server and insert the disk from the configured server. Boot server. From console modify hostname, ip addresses etc. There is a thing with a certificate. I don't know anymore how I did this. Maybe you can look this up on the internet. Maybe you can first create a disk this way with a NONO host name to use it as you duplicate server disk

Hope this helps a bit

[oreeh]

FYI: this thread has been moved to the ESX Server 3.x Configuration forum.

Oliver

VMTN User Moderator

[-stijn-]

Ok Thanks.

I didn't received any feedback yet. If you can remember the certificate thing, please inform me

[rreynol]

stijn,

I am about to attempt this with an HP DL585 G2 server using RAID 1. I noticed that the following files have either the hostname or host IP:

/etc/sysconfig/network

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-vswif0

/etc/vmware/vpxa.cfg

/etc/vmware/esx.conf

/etc/hosts

/var/pegasus/repository/root#PG.InterOp/instances/CIM_ObjectManager.idx

/root/anaconda-ks.cfg

You can probably ignore the kickstart cfg file. I would suggest generating a new ssh host key (ssh-keygen -b 1024 -f /etc/ssh_host_key -N ''). You will also need to tweak your virtual switch to change the vmotion IP number. As I come across other issues I will post them. You can execute a find command from the service console to see if you have other files. Change the information in square brackets to match your needs:

find -exec grep "[host or IP]" '{}' \; -print

for example:

find /etc -exec grep "ESX01" '{}' \; -print

-Robert

[dave_rowland]

we have taken that approach and it worked ok, no certificate issues?

you have to change the mac addresses for the service console and the HA as these

are in config files.

[phil_riley]

Can you change the mac addresses for the console and Vmotion to any arbitrary address?

Thanks!

-Phil