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Izzy1977
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Migrating Virtual Machines on Separate Local Disk ESX hosts

I need help or confirmation on the migration of Virtual Machines in ESX 3.0 and Virtual Center 2.0. This is the setup: Two hosts each with their own separate local storage. The first ESX host is overloaded with sessions so I want to migrate some of the sessions from one host to another. Again there is NO SAN attached storage that the hosts are sharing, so the VMDK and VMX files reside on the local disk. I read different solutions in different places. One solution is to simply right click on the host in Virtual Center and choose migrate. Another is to use ftp or scp and re-register the vmx file. Which is the correct method? I am assuming that the ftp or scp method is for those that do not have Virtual Center? Is this correct? Or am I missing something. Does anyone know of a good tutorial for migrating Virtual Machines?

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Chris_S_UK
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You are correct, use the Migrate option if you are using Virtual Center. Note that you will have to power down the VMs before you can migrate them to another host.

If you are not using VC, then you will have to do it more manually but note that FastSCP from Veeam is much better (faster, anyway) than scp.

Chris

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Chris_S_UK
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You are correct, use the Migrate option if you are using Virtual Center. Note that you will have to power down the VMs before you can migrate them to another host.

If you are not using VC, then you will have to do it more manually but note that FastSCP from Veeam is much better (faster, anyway) than scp.

Chris

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christianZ
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All is correct - in addition you can use the VMware Converter (free) for moving them.

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Izzy1977
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I have tried to migrate, but the migration fails. During the post check I get the following error:

"Migration from Severname1 to servername2: Network interface 'Network Adapter 1' uses network '...', which is not accessible.

I am still able to click Next though. The migration starts and then fails. When I searched the file structures of both systems under /vmfs/volumes/.... a folder was created for the vm and a single flat.vmdk file was transferred to the destination machine. None of the other vmdks or vmx files were transferred. On the source machine the entire VM folder that contained all the vmdk and vmx files are gone.

I am trying to SCP the files of another test machine now. I know after I transfer all the files over I need to re-register the vmx file.

Is this the command?

vmware-cmd –s register /vmfs/volumes/.....

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Izzy1977

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ExCon
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Izzy, you need to make sure both of your servers have virtual switches that are named the same. Check capitalization, too!

I.E., server1 has a switch named Production, so server2 needs a switch named Production.

Rob_Bohmann1
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Another possibility is you can remove the nic from the vm for the migration and then add it back after the migration.

Izzy1977
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I was able to use FastSCP and reregister the VMs. I am still unable to use the migrate option in VC. However this workaround will suffice for now. Thanks for all the help.

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