Copy VMare ESXI

[MikeTEC]

HI all,

Hope you can help, we have installed VMare ESXI with 1 VM on one of our RAID Arrays.

We need to copy  VMare ESXI and all its VM to a new Array, due to an issue on it.

We use a Cisco UCS server, can any think of the best practice to do this type of copy?

Thanks

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

are you running a standalone ESXi host (i.e. the free edition), or is the host managed by vCenter Server (which version/edition).

In case it is managed by vCenter Server (Essential Plus edition, or better), you have the option to migrate the VM from the GUI, which is probably the easiest way to achieve your goal.

If it is a standalone host, some options are backup/restore, export/import as OVF, or copy the VM directly using VMware's OVFTool (see https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2012/06/how-to-copy-vms-directly-between-esxi.html )

André

[MikeTEC]

Hi André

We run vSphere 6 Standard ( not connected to any vCenter Server)

To help explain myself clearer, we want to copy  ESXi to new array and set it to be bootable.

We have a copy of the current datastore and VM that sits  in the current array.

The issue we have issues the current array is full and we need to move it larger array but we dont want to lose the ESXi  config or the VM config

Thanks

[a_p_]

I'm still not quite sure whether I understand this correctly, so please don't mind me asking.

What do you mean with "copy the ESXi to a new array"? Are you booting from SAN?

If it's just about the ESXi host configuration that you want to keep, you may consider backing this up, installing ESXi on the new host, and then restore the configuration to this new host (see e.g. https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2042141). The VM's configuration is stored in its .vmx file, so that shouldn'd be an issue.

André