Manually copy VM to USB and back to storage

[snootalope]

I need to copy a VM from one piece of storage to another.  Sounds simple enough but I've never done it where I'm not moving it from two SAN's that can see each other.  In this case, I need to shutdown a VM, copy it to an external USB drive, and take it to another site.

We use two EMC VNX5300 SAN's with Recoverpoint appliances.  All is well at the moment, but one of our protected LUN's holds our current Exchange server VM and that VM is going to be replaced by our new Exchange server.  I'm thinking rather than waiting for this new VM to copy some 100GB over our WAN (40MB fiber) I'd speed up the process by copying the full VM off of our production side and deliver it to our DR side via external USB storage.  The VM would be turned off of course on the production side while it's being copied.  Is this even doable?  Or am I just better off letting Recoverpoint handle it and let it do it's replication?

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

The best route would be to export the VM as an OVF which you will be able to copy to usb storage deivce - carry the usb storage to the new site and import the OVF to the other environment -

[snootalope]

Thanks man

[ch1ta]

Additionally, there is a free tool called VeeamZIP that is likely to meet your expectations.

In the nutshell, it’s a for zipping given VM. 

Just add the corresponding host to VB&R console and VeeamZIP required VM to USB device. Once the job is finished, you’ll have the highly de-duped and compressed VM on your USB appliance. Later this VM can be restored to any location.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.