Is Migrate… and Move To… the same for a powered-off VM?

[Dave_the_Wave]

There's no doubt what vCenter's Migrate offers for a live VM.

But for a powered-off VM, can the Move To do the same job?

I've always been paranoid about powered-off VMs that are shuffled around by Migrate, then powered-on and vmxnet3 decides to flip with a new MAC address.

What is really the best way to move around powered-off VMs, and why?

And nothing fancy, among the same pile of hosts in a Datacenter all in the same room.

[daphnissov]

The Move To command is only going to change the VM in inventory, not actually transport any of the files. The Migrate option, when a VM is powered off, will cause it to be registered on another host. If all you want is to register it elsewhere, Migrate is what you want. I've never experienced your vmxnet3 issue just by that.

[Dave_the_Wave]

This is exciting: when you Move To… a host, right away it jumps to the Migrate window.

That pretty much answers it.

I know MACs are only supposed to be re-issued on Clone, but I have always been paranoid about it since that can mess up Windows licenses and activations of all types. May have been something I witnessed during my ESXi freebie hypervisor days.

[daphnissov]

It's automatically opening the Migrate wizard because your target is an ESXi host. That type of container is physical and not logical. If you selected a folder, for example, that would not open the Migrate wizard because it's a logical move in inventory only.