Move VM's off Server

[jsweber]

We have one server that we have been testing ESX 3.5 on and we have created a couple of VM's. We decided we wanted to reconfigure the server (basically start over) but I want to keep the VM's we have already created. What is the best or easiest method to accomplish this? Can we just hook up an external drive and just copy the files? If so what are all the files we need to copy?

Sorry but just starting to get our feet wet so to speak with vmware. Can't wait till we get a 2nd server with vmotion..

Thanks

Scott

[lamw · Accepted solution]

Yes at this point, since you don't have a secondary host configured, you don't have advanced features like VMotion where you can move a live VM without powering the system off. Your suggestion on copying the files to external storage is exactly the solution, power off the system and go to the /vmfs/volumes/<storage1,etc,> and copy the full directory to NFS share or something.

cp -rf /vmfs/volumes/....... /to/your/external/source

If you happen to have the VMs on a SAN, you can actually leave them on there, and when you rebuild your ESX Host, you can re-scan and possibly resignature the LUN, but it sounds like you might just be using local storage?

[jsweber]

I will give this a shot, thanks for the command and everything..

Scott