200GB .vmdk image problems with ESXI

[1nzane]

Hello everyone,

I have been using Vmware convertor to convert images from third party software, and I am now having a major issue.

I have successfully created a .vmdk image file using Vmware converter and this file is 199GB its an entire system backup of an application server. I can use Vmplayer or VMserver and it works fine its when i use the converter to create a new machine on ESXI it fails and I have tried to use the vmimporter and I don't go anywhere with that.

Can someone please help me import this 200GB image to ESXi? I have 500GB datastore sitting there.

Thanks.

[admin]

Hi,

Can you post more details on what problems you are having with Converter? Also, can you post which Converter version(s) that you tried with?

It is best if you can use the Converter 4.0 beta release and post your message to that beta forum. More details at:

http://communities.vmware.com/community/beta/converter

Thanks

Sudarsan

[Peter_vm]

Can you post .vmx file of that virtual machine (from vmplayer or vmserver)?

[1nzane]

Hello Sudarsan when I click on that link for 4.0 beta it say I am not authorized to download or have access to that link.

Peter here is the contents of that .vmx file

[admin]

Hi,

Here is some information about getting Converter beta 4.0.

Thanks

Sudarsan

~~ Getting Started ~~

If you already have a VMware store account, please follow the link below to

gain access to Converter 4.0 beta software, documentation and join the

Converter 4.0 beta community.

If you don't have a VMware store account, please follow the link below to create

a VMware store account, gain access to Converter 4.0 beta software,

documentation and join Converter 4.0 beta community.

When the user successfully registers, he will recieve a "Welcome" email containing a link to follow to login to the beta community for the first time. He must use this link for his first login. If he has a problem logging in at this point, the Welcome email contains an email address for reporting problems.

[1nzane]

Sudarsan, I appreciate your help with this issue of mine, as I have mentioned before its a 200GB image .vmdk file and i have 500 gig drive/ datastore but no matter what i use 3.5 or 4.0 I get the error below-

FAILED: A general system error occurred:

The file is too big for the filesystem

[admin]

have 500 gig drive/ datastore but no matter what i use 3.5 or

4.0 I get the file is too big for the system to import.

I am not sure what you mean by 3.5 - I meant Converter 4.0 (not ESX / VC 4.0)

is there a limit to import to ESX

I am not aware of any such limit.

Also, using converter, you may choose to copy only the used data (so you may end up with a smaller vmdk).

Thanks

Sudarsan

[1nzane]

Sudarsan,

I have an image which is 200GB in size its a vmware image .vmdk file. how can i import that image to VI?

I took your advice and downloaded beta version of converter and whenever I try to convert that image to a VI image it tells me the file is to big

so my question again is how can i import this 200GB image to VI

[Dave_Mishchenko]

How large is the virtual hard drive from the perspective of the guest OS? I.e. is it actually larger than 256 GB, but only has 200 GB of data? If that is the case, then you'll need to reformat your datastore with a larger block size. When you create a datastore on ESX(i), you can choose a block size of 1, 2, 4 or 8 MB which allows for a maximum VMDK size of 256, 512, 1024 and 2048 GB respectively.

[admin]

and whenever I try to convert that image to a VI image it

tells me the file is to big

Is this a converter error that you get? Which OS are you running the converter on? How is the 200GB image being accessed (i.e. from a Windows server or a Samba server or something else?)

It is best if you can post the converter logs and move this thread to the converter beta forum.

Thanks

Sudarsan

[t0pspeed]

Hello everyone,

Can someone please help me import this 200GB image to ESXi? I have 500GB datastore sitting there.

Thanks.

I'm running into a similar space problem as I wasn't wise with block sizes. So I tried something out of desperation as I don't want to reformat/reconvert or clone the working VMs. The physical system I want to convert has a 320gb disk which VMware Convert (P2V) refuses to convert. It also goes beyond 200gb.

I've decided to create an lvm volume containing two 160gb "virtually physical" disks. This should provide a logical volume of 320gb. I will then try to decompress the image I created of the 320gb system using somthing like: gunzip -dc bigimage.dd | dd of=/dev/mapper/bigger-vol and see what happens. I expected to either lose all the lmv partitionning or if I'm lucky just the ability to boot. Maybe I can fix the boot problem through a third volume but if it squashes the partition tables, then bye bye. Unfortunately, it takes about 12 hours to uncompress 70gb into 320gb so I will not have an answer for another 10 hours.

update: didn't work. The partition tables got completely messed-up (as I expected). Maybe there's another solution but I'm going to have to find some space and copy the VMs.