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pgator17
Contributor
Contributor

Copying vm from a non bootable host

Is it possible to copy a vm to a usb drive from a non bootable esxi 5.0 host? I have a host that will not boot, I am getting a pink screen stating no place to dump data on disk. I can not get the exsi host to fully boot. I have the option to go into debug mode, I was hoping I could somehow get into the host and copy to a usb drive a vm that I need data off of.

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virtualg_uk
Leadership
Leadership

If you cannot fix the issue. one solution is to re-install ESXi onto the host.

Obviously, install ESXi to new media / or a new USB drive to keep all existing storage intact

(Assuming you are using local disks for the datastore that the VM is on.

However, if the datastore is on an external device such as SAN or NAS you can try to mount the datastore / lun etc onto another host if you have one and access the VM from there by browsing the datastore and adding it back into the inventory of a new host)


Graham | User Moderator | https://virtualg.uk
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pgator17
Contributor
Contributor

Once I have the esxi booted on the host via usb drive, what do i do to navigate the old raid 5 array disks to look for what I want and copy it.

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cyberpaul
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

With ESXi, you should be able to see (or mount) the old datastore and see the files.

Alternatively, if you're familiar with linux, you could run a live distro, install vmfs-tools and mount the datastore in linux:

http://woshub.com/how-to-access-vmfs-datastore-from-linux-windows/

Pavel

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virtualg_uk
Leadership
Leadership

It should automatically show up within the web client. Do an adapter rescan if not: VMware Knowledge Base


Graham | User Moderator | https://virtualg.uk
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