Cold migration to exteranl HDD

[almashdi]

Hello,

I am running VMware 5.5 and I have VM that I would like to transfer to another offsite VMware. Can I attach an external HDD to one my USB port on the host and copy this VM over? VM is not active and switched off?

VM is 400GB so I need to find the best way to achieve this. If I can connect it to USB port how would I copy my .vmdk to this external HDD?

Thanks

Al

[rahulsharma0304]

Hi Almashdi,

your requirement can be achived by following the below steps.

1. Login to ESXi Shell via SSH and disable the USB Arbitrator service using using the command: /etc/init.d/usbarbitrator stop.

   This service automatically is enabled by default to allow pass-through of USB devices to your VMs.

2. Plug-in your USB device to your ESXi host and verify that the USB storage is visible using the command: esxcli storage core device list | grep -i usb

3. Once USB storage is visible you can browse and access your USB device by looking under /vmfs/volumes/ and move the VM folder to USB storage

[RickVerstegen]

You can use WinSCP to transfer the vm folder with it's contents to your local pc or laptop. Copy it then to an external USB device.

If you use vCenter export the VM to OVF/OVA and copy to an external USB device.

[almashdi]

Thanks Rahul,

When I tried to ssh to my host, using a PC on the same network as my host, I get "Network Error: Connection Refused" error message. Under Security profile on my host, I have ssh enabled for server and client.

Any idea?

Al

[rahulsharma0304]

Normally it should work, try to disable and re-enable the SSH service once again from Host --> Configure --> Security Profile -- in Services Tab "Edit"

if still it did not work try it from DCUI if you have direct access to esxi host

do let me know the status..