I have an ESX 3.5 server setup for testing/eval/proof of concept and would like to move this to ESXi. Is there any way to to this without trashing the VMFS contents? Most of the VMs on there are small and are easily moved off, but one is pretty large (500GB) and would be a nuisance to backup.
I have good data-level backups, but the virtual server in question has been customized enough that doing a rebuild from backups would be a tad more PITA than I'd care for.
If you have another server with nearly identical configuration (if not identical, then you have much more work or the task is impossible, as esxi has no notion of preserving local esx disk), you can install esxi in that server, use something like partimage to image all the non-vmfs partitions, and restore these partitions in to esx server. this requires that the esx server has enough non-vmfs disk space to accommodate all the non-vmfs esxi disk partitions, because the target partition size for restoration should be the same or larger.
Do you know if the following would work, assuming the VMFS volumes are on different disks? (I would assume it would, but...)
Pull the drives for VMFS volume, or unplug FC, etc... and then install, and then put the data/vmfs drives back?
Where are the VMs stored? If they are shared storage SAN/NFS than it is not a problem - shut down the vms - rebuild your ESX host with ESXi present the shared storage and re-add the VMs tot he inventory - remember that ESXi and ESX have the same virtualization engine so nothing need to be change in the VMs - now if they are on local storage I think you will have to rebuild the entire
Is the server capable of being booted from a USB stick? If so, you can create an ESXi bootable, boot it off this and just re-add the existing local VMs by using the datastore browser.
I've just tested this and it works in that I suspended a VM on my ESX host, rebooted it off an ESXi bootable USB stick and then just added the VM by browsing to the local datastore which had already been added automatically. It resumed fine and could be used on the network without issue. This was on an HP DL385 with SmartArray 6i controller.
