How do I move a server from one host to another?

[chriskchung]

If I have 2 boxes, how do I move it from one ESX server to another? I plan to shut down the server before moving. I do not have shared storage

[ctfoster]

Veem has a product that will let you copy files between esx servers

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[chriskchung]

That product looks cool and may be the solution, but I was just want to understand the file system. Is there documentation that provides a list of the files and how to move from one to another?

[mcowger]

By default, all files related to a VM will be located in the VM's folder in /vmfs/volumes/<volumename>/<vmname>

--Matt

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

Here's a web page with a list of the files - . One thing to note is that you don't want to be moving the vmdk file (and flat.vmdk) directly with scp or cp/mv. You instead want to use the vmkfstools command if you are manually moving the file. This is to prevent corruption of the flat.vmdk file. You should also note that scp access for the root login is disabled by default so you'll need to create another account for this. FastSCP allows you to switch to the root login after you make the connection.

You might also want to try method 3 here - , but I would also take a look at VMware Converter - . It's free and designed to handle this sort of task.