Move hard disks from old host to new host

[Wind89]

We currently have 2 ESXi hosts. A brand new one and an old one which is still running.

The new ESXi host is running out of disk space (± 180GB left). The plan was always to move the newest hard disk set of the old host to the new host and now the time has come.

However, on the disk set on the old host I want to move is one subdirectory with the name .sdd.sf. I read this directory is needed for booting the ESXi host.

All the VM's on the old host have been migrated to the new host.

Can I without problems remove the hard disk array from the old host and install them in the new host?  Creating a new array on the new host will destroy all data on the disks inclusing the .sdd.sf directory.

[Lalegre]

Hey Wind89​,

That file is for the SCSI device description system file in the VMFS as you can see here: VMware Knowledge Base.

If you are going to complete move the disk from one ESXi to another I suggest you to unmount it, detach it and when you connect it to the new ESXi it will recognize a VMFS partition, from there you can use that as a Datastore or simple wipe all the data and install it again.

But be careful because if you installed the ESXi in that disk then everything is going to be wiped.

[Wind89]

Regarding your last comment, what does this mean for the new host?

Is it not safer to erase the content of the disk array using the old host before moving the disks like you also mentioned?

[Lalegre]

It does not mean anything for the new ESXi I was just pointing that assuming you want to maintain also the old ESXi. And of course if you want to wipe everything would be always better to completely erase the disk before using it in another system.

[Wind89]

Thank you. This is the information I needed.