Cannot edit VM without constantly removing and readding hard drives

[T4nkcommander]

I am currently testing VMWare ESXI and Vsphere/Vcenter to see if I want to use the hypervisor for my production environment. So far, I have been very displeased with the software, as it has been giving me nothing but issues on the simplest tasks.

After failing to import any of my exported OVFs, even with the modifications recommended by the support staff, I have been attempting to manually redeploy the hard drive images to ESXI. I intend to do this by using my Macrium Reflect Rescue ISO, where I should (and have in the past) be able to fix boot problems via the tool.

However, I am running into two issues:

1) VMWare boots directly into the hard drive rather than the ISO. This leads to...
2) Me trying to edit the [shut-down] VM, only to get notified that the vmdk on the datastore can not be located. This happens every time I try to edit my VMs. 

The only workaround to number 2 is to remove all of the hard disks, save, then add them back. This is extremely annoying, but has been the case for every VM I've tried deploying so far. Is there any reason VMWare can't do such a simple task as editing a VM without requiring workarounds? 

Thanks in advance. 

[DavoudTeimouri]

Try to remove snapshots or migrate virtual machine to another datastore.

[a_p_]

>>> I have been attempting to manually redeploy the hard drive images to ESXI.

How exactly did you do this? Please note that the .vmdk file format is different for ESXi, and Workstation, so that just uploading the files will not work.

André

[T4nkcommander]

That's interesting, as the only VM that works is the one copied over from Workstation (I copied the VMDK and VMX files). The other machines fall into two categories:

1) Machines imported from VirtualBox per my previous thread. The import process failed normally, so I implemented the instructions provided here. Unfortunately, these machines failed to boot until I changed the HDD controller to IDE. It was then that I discovered the topic problem.
2) Machines created using [only the] VMDK files I copied from my VBox instances.

So, in summary, I have machines imported from OVF1, machines created using copied VMDK files from VBox, and machines created using copied files from Workstation. On the latter one works. 

>> How exactly did you do this? Please note that the .vmdk file format is different for ESXi, and Workstation, so that just uploading the files will not work.

I have not done it for ESXi yet, but previously I made all of the functioning VMs by restoring an image to newly-created virtual disk. Instead of a windows installation ISO, I am using my recovery environment. It then fixes driver problems, which bridged the P2V transition. 

[T4nkcommander · Accepted solution]

So I believe that there was just enough difference between a Virtualbox VMDK file and a ESXI VMDK such that the latter was not playing well, causing the problems above. Strangely, the VBox VMDKS would play with Workstation, and a machine that was up and running in Workstation would also migrate fine to ESXi.

I ended up running the VM in VBox and then used the VMWare converter to migrate it to ESXi. This seems to have done the trick.