Moving Dell Attached storage from one ESX 3.5 Server to another

[thesixuk]

We need to decommission our first ESX server. It currently has a Dell Powervault MD1000 attached.

I'm hoping to be able to shut down the old server, remove the RAID controller, insert it into our new ESX server, re-attach the MD1000 and somehow re-add the VM's that are on the MD1000.

Does anyone know if it's possible?

Has anyone done this, and if so have you got any advice for me before I start?

The MD1000 has a pretty critical server on there that's using over 1TB ofstorage, so cloning it to another drive isn't possible.

Thanks in advance

[mikepodoherty]

I'm not familiar with the MD1000 but I remember that the PowerVault 220 had a switch that you could throw that enabled shared storage so you could cluster directly to the 220. IF the MD1000 has the same capabilities, I suggest adding a RAID card to the new server and attaching it to the MD1000 as shared storage.

Then you'd follow the normal migration process for guest servers from the earlier version of VMware to ESX 3.5.

Mike

[balacs]

MD1000 does not supports clustering. You should be able to remove the RAID controller, install it on another server, attach it to MD1000 and bring up the VMs.

Make sure you that you dont reconfigure the RAIDs when you migrate to the new server. If you use the same RAID controller, you should not see any issues.

Bala

Dell Inc

[thesixuk]

Thanks Bala,

Is there anything I need to do on the ESX Server to get it to see the local storage on the MD1000?

I can't remember if ESX Server formats a newly detected local storage device with VMFS.

Thanks

Thesixuk

[balacs]

No. I cannot think of anything you have to do.

ESX should add the VMFS automatically. If it does not, do not try to add the volume manually, because it will ask you to reformat the VMFS.

Bala

Dell Inc