How to get vm into Virtual Infrastructure

[mandg]

I just used convertor 3.0 and successfully imported a vm into our ESX 3.0 farm. When I log into the ESX host using virtual client, I can see the vm however, when I log into Virtual Infrastructure for the entire cluster, it's no where to be found. Is there something special I need to do to get the vm to show in Virtual Infrastructure?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

It should normally show up in VirtualCenter pretty quickly. You could try to restart the VC agent on the server. Did you point converter at the server itself when you imported the VM or at the virtualcenter server (preferred).

[mandg]

Ah, maybe that's it. I pointed the converter at the server itself - not to the virtualcenter server. Do I need to start all over again?

[olegarr]

mandg,

I would not start over (although it an option, too). If everything appears properly when you log in to ESX host directly, you can just remove this host from your Datacenter and re-add it again. It should work fine and should not affect any production VMs that are running on your ESX host.

olegarr

[mandg]

Thanks olegarr,

I presume I can just select the option to 'Remove from Inventory' on the ESX server where the vm is now. However, once I log back into my virtualcenter server, how do I add the vm back into inventory?

Thanks!

[olegarr · Accepted solution]

mandg,

No, I did not mean "Remove from Inventory".

I was talking about remove whole ESX Host from Datacenter along with all machines and re-add it after that...

However, if you used "Remove from Inventory" already (and if you really do not want "play with whole host it's maybe option for you) you cannot add VM back to inventory (at least I do not know how). However, you can easily create new VM, and during creation under "VM Configuration" select "Custom" and when you will see options fro disk select "Use an existing virtual disk" and point to your old disk. So, basically, you just will recreate VM and with old Virtual HD. That should work...

Good luck

olegarr

[mandg]

Ok, thanks, olegarr. I selected to remove the server from virtual center but I received a message that at least one of the vm's are required to be in maintenence mode.

The vm is only 16 GB so I simply deleted it from the server and re-ran the convertor- this time selecting to import into the virtual center.

Should be good now- Thanks again for you help!

[DFATAnt]

The way to add a vm back in to inventory is to do the following:

1. highlight the esx server in virtualcenter

2. select the summary tab

3. right click on the datastore where the vm is located and select Browse Datastore

4. in the Browse Datastore window click on the folder of the vm that you want to add in to inventory

5. right click on the vm's .vmx file and select Add to Inventory

This will add the vm in to the inventory in virtualcenter.

Ant

[mandg]

That's interesting Dfatant-

Does this then that I could have simply bypassed using convertor altogether? The original vm came from the latest version of VMware server- could I have simply copied the vmx and other files into the VirtualCenter's datastore and followed the same steps you outlined?

Sounds like it would save a little time compared to my approach of using converter-

[DFATAnt]

I think you probably could have done that. I haven't used VMware server, but it is my understanding that the files are compatible with esx. It would certainly be worth trying next time you need to move a server from VMware server to esx. It could save you some hassles if it works.

If it didn't work, there is probable another option you could try. I am positive that the vmdk files will work when moved from VMware server to esx. You could move the vmdk files and create the vmx file manually, change the permissions on the vmx file and then add it in to inventory

Ant

[Dave_Mishchenko]

You can do this only if the VM on VMware Server was created with a virtual SCSI disk. ESX will not support a VM created with an IDE drive unless you use converter, a similar application or a procedure to switch the VM's drive to SCSI.

As mentioned you would copy the *.vmdk files to server and then run the command vmkfstools -i to import the vmdk file into VMFS 3 format. The command would be in this syntax

vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes//destination.vmdk

After that you would create a new VM on ESX and use the the destination.vmdk file. If you are using snapshots on VMware Server you would want to commit those before doing the copy.

[DFATAnt]

Thanks for clarifying the steps Dave. As I said I am not a user of VMware Server.

Having said all that, there would be no need to do anything manually after converting the disks. Just create a new vm guest and point it at the newly converted disks.

Ant