Converting from Hyper-V to ESXi (free)

[lonix]

Hi all help some of you can help me.

The setup:

Hyper-V Server.

SYS: 37,6gb 10k SATAII drive

VMVOL: 500Gb 7,2k SATAII Drive

WHS(windows home Server)

6x1Tb 7,2k SATAII Drives

My PSU on the WHS died a week ago, and since im it summer i havent realy bothered to to fix it, so i figuerd that ill just putt the tb drives into my hyper-v server and map the NTFS formated drives to a vm in hyper-v and start the vm, it worked like a charm (after about 10Bosd and 20 new driver installs).

But now im thinking of moving to esxi 4.0 on the hyper-v server, but i cant see anywhere in documentation that its possible to map the tb drives directly to a vm, it wont be any fun converting the NTFS drives to VMFS->VMDK->NTFS and loosing almost 5,5tb of data in progress....

Is it anyway i can use something like this:

37,6gb = esxi+ os isos

500gb = vmvol for general vm's

6x1tb = Directly connected to a spesific vm, without loosing all current data ? (cant affored buying any addional hw)

BTW: i know server is capabal of running esxi 4.0 (all hw in HCL)

[benma]

You can use vmware converter for your migration.

http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

[lonix]

but where should i contain the date during the convert ?

i have no problem with the vm's those i dont care about (vhds i know how to convert) my big issu is keeping the 6x1tb of data, intact

[J1mbo]

In 3.5 at least you can't pass-through physical disks like in Hyper-V.

Also the converter cannot be used with WHS if it has more than one drive, since it doesn't handle the drive extender tombstones correctly. Although the converter appears to run correctly, the result is that the volume containing the tombstones is corrupted and all data then inaccessible (I've tried this).

The best bet would be either move to Hyper-V (R2 maybe) or get a second server to perform the conversion by reinstalling and copying. Also bear in mind that the maximum disk volume in ESXi is just 2TB, for some reason.

I personally handled the move by freeing up enough space to go down to a single drive (disabled WHS duplication, archived a lot, stripped out old backups) then used the converter to transfer to a new physical box (running ESXi obviously).

Hope that helps.

[lonix]

seems like i just need to stick to Hyper-v Then

there issent a hack or anything ? anyone knows ?

EDIT: also it would be a problem for me if i ever need to accsess the data from a windows host(if i use a vmfs on the drive)

[J1mbo]

That is true, but since the data could be all over the place due to Drive Extender, the same would also be true with any other version of Windows.