Migrating VM's from VMWare Server to ESX 3.5

[TommyFCP]

I have VM's on my VMWare Server I would like to move over to my ESX 3.5 Virtual Center... How can I do this?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Your post has been moved to the VI: Virtual Machine and Guest OS forum

Dave Mishchenko

VMware Communities User Moderator

[lamw]

You can use VMware Converter, it's a free GUI driven utility that can move your VM's created by Server/Workstatin/Fusion including from other competition like Microsoft and convert them directly into VC and it'll offload it to an ESX Server or you can directly convert the VM and offload to specific ESX Host. It works great and updates the .vmdk files with necessary changes to be hosted on ESX.

[TommyFCP]

I tried Converter, I get "The managed host was actually running ESX 2.x, rather than 3.x or VC"

[lamw]

Can you explain in more detail to the error you see? You should be able to choose a variety of sources of where your VM is from, you stated from your Subject title you're migrating VM from VMware Server to ESX Server 3.5? Are you looking for a live or cold-migration? Last I check with VMware Converter, they could not do a live V2V, that could have changed with the most recent release of Converter. In terms of cold-migration, you just power-down your VM, point your source to the .vmdk/.vmx file of your VM and then point to your target whether that be ESX or VC and the conversion should start.