How to open virtualmachines after esx reinstall ?

[vin100]

Hello,

I have a server with two disks. I have installed ESXi on the first disk and two virtual machines on the second disk (which is used as vmfs storage). Then I have completely wiped out the first disk and reinstalled ESXi on this disk. The two virtual machines are still on the second disk but of course the newly installed ESX does not show them.

How do I "reload" them in ESXi (I'm used to VMWare Workstation where you can simply "open" a vmx file) ?

Thanks

[mail_vijayar]

When you install ESX and create a Data store a UUID will be associated with each data store and acts as a mapping/reference to the dat store; this is useful when you try to restore your VMFS volumes in situations when a server crashes.

But when you have reinstalled your ESX server then there is no way of remapping a local VMFS volume (unless undelete utility was used).

Reagrds,

Vijay

[AntonVZhbankov]

If you see datastore and can browse it - select .vmx file in Datastore Browser, right-click and select "Add to inventory"

---

VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[vin100]

Thank you, this is what I was looking for,

Best regards,

Vincent

[avlieshout]

You could use this script to scan your vmfs volumes and import VMs

#!/bin/bash

# Scan LUNs for .vmx files
find /vmfs/volumes -name *.vmx | while read vm
do
        echo VM found and registering: "$vm"
        vmware-cmd -s register "$vm"       # Register the VMs

done

-Arnim van Lieshout

-

---

Blogging: http://www.van-lieshout.com

Twitter:

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".