I have to move a few VMs from local storage on one ESX 3.5 Server to local storage on another. The customer I am working with has Vcenter but does not have Vmotion.
What would be the best way to perform the move.
Cold migration?
Import to new ESX server via Converter?
I tried to do an import with the VM turned off and after 30 minutes the progress was only at 5% . This server only took 25 minutes for P2V, should cold import from VI3 VM to VI3 VM take longer than P2V? This is an all Gigabit LAN environment.
When I tried to do the move via Migrate, the progress hung at 25% and never finished.
cold migration will work just fine. Shutdown the guest, right click choose migrate.
cold migration will work just fine. Shutdown the guest, right click choose migrate.
Do you think the cold migration would take longer than the P2V of the same server? (considering identical LAN conditions).
I think cold migration will be quicker, but both solutions will get you to a resolution.
Thats what I was thinking, I will have to go back and make sure I dont have some other issue causing problems with my migration.
Thanks for the input.
Just a quick follow up with my results:
I used the import function because I needed to shrink one of the VMDKs during the process.
VMs were off, network is gigabit.
VM1 - Original VM had one 40GB and one 160GB VMDK associated with it.. 160GB was reduced to 100GB during the import.
Import duration was approx. 5 hours.
VM2 - Original VM had one 40GB and one 120GB VMDK.
Import duration was approx 10 hours.