Moving VM's - changing data store

[SAGEBCI]

Hello,

This is a mutliplart question, but hopefully simple to follow. I need to move my VM's to another Data Store from my ESXi host / node, so I can upgrade the host harware. Quick background; we have a Dell T605 server running ESXi, with 1 RAID 5 array. We are going to upgrade the current RAID and add another RAID 1, using the RAID 1 for the console and the RAID 5 for our data store. We have another ESXi host on line now, and the main quaestion is what is the best way to move the VM's to the "temporary" host, while we upgrade the main host. The VM's do not need to be running, just what is the best way to copy them from one host to another? Once copied back to the "main" host, how ca we add these VM's back into our inventory? We have researchd moving the VM's using Fast SCP, and tested, works well, but we cannot figure out how to add this to our VM inventory in the VI Client cousole. Currtenlty we are testing using Vcenter converter. Not sure what the best, and quickest way is to perform our data copy / backup.

Thanks for your help and thoughts...

[adolopo · Accepted solution]

There are plenty of options availible to do what you want. You can:

1)SCP (as you already have)

2)Clone the VMDK (vmkfstools -i, in your case you'd use rcli)

3)Storage Vmotion

Once you get it onto the new datastore, (if you're on the same HOST) you'll want to remove the VM (you moved) from inventory, then browse to the *.vmx on the new Datastore and (right click) add to inventory.

Viola.

[SAGEBCI]

Thanks for your advice. I continued with Fast SCP to move VM's. Creating the clones in the ESXi environment was a little more than i wanted to get into for the moment. Much thanks to you for your help and advice!