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NeumayerFSS
Contributor
Contributor

can't copy an vm from one esxi hypervisor to another

I tried to copy a virtual machine from one esxi hypervisor to another (i shut down the source vm prior to this). after doing so i tried to start the vm on the new hypervisor.  as usually i got the question if i copied or moved to machine. after clicking  the "copied" option, I got an error message that the hypervisor could not find the HDD  '/vmfs/volumes/5bc99a5c-04297743-4306-509a4c929e71/edoosys/edoosys/edoosys-000001.vmdk' or one of it's snapshot files could not be found. Indeed the file 'edoosys-000001-delta.vmdk' was missing. I copied it again to the datastorage, but the hypervisor keeps deleting this file and complaining the the vmdk is incomplete.

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peetz
Leadership
Leadership

Hello Ingrid and welcome to the forums!

How are you trying to copy the VM from one host to the other?

A supported and the recommended way to do this is via the ovftool command line tool.

You can find a detailed write-up e.g. here: https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2012/06/how-to-copy-vms-directly-between-esxi.html

Andreas

Twitter: @VFrontDe, @ESXiPatches | https://esxi-patches.v-front.de | https://vibsdepot.v-front.de
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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

That looks like the source VM had one or more of its VMDK-files assigned via an absolute path.
I would suggest you check and if necessary adjust the paths in the vmx-file and then reregister the VM.


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Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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