Hi.
I'm hoping someone here will have an answer to my problem. I apologize if this has been answered before, but searching always turns up information about the various VMs, not the Hypervisor itself. (Try searching "clone esxi4 installation" )
Anyways, here's my situation:
* I bought a HP Proliant DL380 G4 server with two 36G disks awhile back. At that time I didn't have budget for additional disks.
* Installed vSphere Hypervisor 4.0 (ESXi 4.0) onto it (well, tried 3.5 first, didn't like that much, then installed 4.0) Hardware cannot support 4.1 so I have to stay at 4.0. Installed it onto the first two 36 disks running in RAID-0 (I needed the space, so sue me.)
However, now, later I have bought (and have been given) new disks and I now got 2x ~140G disks and 3x 72G disks. I'd like to run these in RAID-5 and run the Hypervisor off that. I can get four of these (in RAID-5) to run together with the older RAID-0 array and when finished copying I can add the fifth disk. But, I don't know how to "clone" a working hypervisor to the other disks.
What's the easiest way to get the complete working ESXi4 installation from the RAID-0 array to the new RAID-5 array? Downtime is not an issue, this is a personal network that is only used by my family.
I'll provide more info if required, just ask.
What's wrong with 10-15 minutes fresh installation? You could temporarily move all working VMs to the other place first before reinstall it. BTW, clone the disk with Ghost/Acronis should work too.
Welcome to the community.
You can use vicfg-cfgbackup to backup your configuration:
http://vmwaretips.com/wp/2009/10/12/before-host-profiles-there-was-vicfg-cfgbackuppl/
Andre