Moving physical disks containing VMs from one ESX server to another.

[mortonarts]

I set up ESX server 3.5 to test it out on a really old server. I just got another server that has about 4 times the resourse but no new hard drives. I installed ESX 3.5 on the new server on a small disk (36 gig) and then after I got it working I moved the big disk (500 gig) from the old server to the new server. I can see the disk storage groups in the VMware infrastructure client and can browse it but can not figure out how to Turn on/import the VMs into the new server. I think i may need to mount the drive somewhere but I do not know linux enough to know what and where to do this. Can anyone either point me to a web doc on how to do this or tell me.

Thank you very much

VMware newby

James

[r_lam]

Okey so you browse the VMFS datastore, and you can se the vm's.

If so you can browse the datastore tried to find the VMX file, then add it to the inventory.

[weinstein5]

Just to add to r.lam - if you can see the VMFS datastores you should be able to use the VI Client's datastore browser and browse to the directory holding your vm and right click on the VMX file one of the options will be add to inventory which will add to your ESX host inventory -

[mortonarts]

That worked like a champ. Thanks guys. You were great. Should I re-install VMtools on each VM?

[r_lam]

Well that depends on the status of the VMware tools, you can find this if you select a vm, and open the Summary tab. If you se here that the VMware Tools are OK than you dont need to reinstall/upgrade the VMware Tools.

If you're running a newer version of ESX you should upgrade the VMtools, you will also se in the summary that the VMtools are "out of date".

[weinstein5]

Since you went 3.5 to 3.5 I do not think it is necessary -

and now for shamefule self promotion - if you founf anything helpful please do not forget to award points -