VMware Cloud Community
AnttiV
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi 4, move/copy/clone installation to another disk?

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" Smiley Happy)

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.

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2 Replies
athlon_crazy
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

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.

http://www.no-x.org
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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

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

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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