Can't Cold migrate a VM

[euphony]

Hi,

I have a VM which is running Windows Server 2003. This is on ESX 3.5 U2 and managed through Virtual Center 2.5. The VM has three disks in total. First two disks are on one VMFS store and 3rd disk on a separate datastore. The server is up and running ok at the moment. When I browse the first datastore I can't see the first two vmdk files for the first two disks. I can see all other files in the VM folder.

I want to migrate this VM to another datastore completely so that all 3 disks are on the same VMFS datastore. But, I can't migrate this as I am getting an error and i think it is to do with no visibilty of first two disks of the VM on the VMFS datastore.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

R

[SuryaVMware]

The Subject line says cold migrating. did you power off the VM? If not i would advice you take a backup of the data from with in the VM as the VMDK files are not visible any more.

When you say the VMDK files of the first 2 disks are missing do you mean the descriptor vmdk files alone or the flat.vmdk files too. If it is the descriptor VMDK files alone they could have been deleted accidentally while the VM is running.

If the descriptor files alone are missing we can try recreate them and have the VM migrated to a different datastore.

-Surya

[euphony]

Yes. I have shutdown the server and tried to migrate this VM to another datastore. See the attached document with screenshots to explain the issue better.

Thanks

R

[espi3030]

I have had this issue in the past and I used VMware Converter to place all my VM's disks on the same new datastore.

Hope this helps!

[SuryaVMware]

I can see that the VMDK files are not seen in the screenshot. Can you logon to the ESX server and get to the datastore VirtualServer3_SAN and list the files in the directory EHCVSDB01?

-Surya

[R-Sommer]

Why don't you simply move (copy and delete) the third virtual disk with vmkfstools and reconfigure your VM?

[euphony]

Its the same. I can't see vmdk files.

R