Moving Virtual machines from ESXi host to ESX

[vuser123]

I have a ESXi Host having few guest virtual machines , I am trying to copy the VM files from ESXi to ESX host manually.

1.Will it work or are there any knows issues ?

2. After adding the copied files in ESX host inventory , the configuration parameters of copied VM machine will change ?

3. Does i need to do anything else

[Troy_Clavell]

can't you just vmotion them over? If on local storage, you can cold migrate or use VMware Converter.

[vuser123]

Nope , i am not using Vmotion , I need to do that manually only as explained in

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=10102&slic...

[Troy_Clavell]

that will work as well. Following the KB, you shouldn't have any problems.

[vuser123]

Thanks for encouraging me , well i am about to start this , one more thing which came into my mind was can i convert one guest VMachine to another ESX using Vmware Convertor tool ( Physical to virtual ) ? or the convertor will detect that its already a VMachine

[Troy_Clavell]

correct, in VMware Converter, you will have the option to import ESX server or VirtualCenter virtual machine.

[vuser123]

Thanks , i am starting to so this task , will take like 10-12 hours for that , will let you know about the status .

[vuser123]

i am not able to access the Vm's files on ESXi host , as the storage browser on the ESXi is very slow and SSH 22 port is also not opened on the box. I does not use any other tool and have to do it manually, any ideas ?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

How did you make out with VMware Converter? Are both hosts on the same LAN and how big are the VMs?

[nick_couchman]

scp is another option - you can enable SSH on the ESXi host (vm-help.com has good instructions) and then use the SCP command from the ESXi host to grab the files and pull them into the ESX datastore. Maybe something like this:

scp root@esxihost:/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/VM1/* /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/VM1/

I'm guessing you're not using SAN-backed storage? If you were, you could just hook the SAN up to both machines and put the VM on the SAN volume. If you have some extra hardware lying around - including a few SATA drives and a RAID controller - you could install the Openfiler system and create an iSCSI volume to connect to your ESXi and ESX hosts.