Copying a VM Server to a USB Thumb Drive

[psullyvan]

We have a VMware ESX 3.5 environment at one location and are now installing a New vSphere 4 envirnonment in another physical location. We want to use the new location as a backup location for some of our production servers.

I'd like to take a copy of some of the ESX 3.5 servers and put them on a thumb drive, then install that image on the new vSphere 4 environment so I basically have a clone one the server in both locations.

What do I need to do to accomplish this? Any help would be appriciated

[AndreTheGiant]

With ESX 3.5 you can mount a USB disk under the Service Console (using Linux mount command), but ntfs is not supported and vfat can't store file bigger than 2 GB (you have to split your vmdk or format with ext3).

I've not tried yet to see if ESX 4.0 can use (under the Service Console) USB disk.

You can also use scp to tranfert file over network (but is slow), or VMware Converter.

With vCenter Server you can use the simple migrate function.

Andre

[danpalacios]

If you use VirtualCenter, you can open up the datastore view of the Host's storage and then select the "download a file from this datastore to your local machine" button (stacked cylinders with a down green arrow icon along the top). This should let you save each file to your thumbdrive attached to your local machine.

[VMmatty]

If copying over the network is too slow, then I think using VMware Converter is the best approach. No need to shut down the production VM during the copy or anything like that. Run Converter and set the destination of the converted VM to be your USB drive. Then bring the USB drive to the other site and run the process in reverse. It isn't the most efficient way to do it and if your network is fast enough then I'd try copying it over the network instead. But if not then the Converter method should give you what you want.

[psullyvan]

When I tried using the data store download method to an external HDD on my local PC. It failed every time. I would get an I/O Error.

I have the guest OS turned off of the VMserver I want to copy. But not working so smoothly. I get 10-15gb out of the 60 for the small server when it fails.

Anything else that would cause the failed error?