uploading from external hd into datastore

[sewallgeek]

I need to move a vm from one host to a different host at a branch office, both running ESXi 4.1. I have copied the vm folder to an external hd from the source host using the datastore browser. Is there any way to plug the external hd directly into the target host via usb and upload the vm folder into the local datastore on the host?

I know I can just use the datastore broswer and upload them over the LAN through a laptop running the vSphere client logged directly into the host (as opposed to the vC server. If I were logged into the vC server would it have to run the traffic back over the WAN to the Vc and then back to the branch office host?). I would rather do it directly from the external into the host.

[DSTAVERT · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the communities.

Unfortunately no. You can use a tool like Veeam fastSCP to transfer. It is much quicker than the datastore browser and it's free. http://veeam.com

[sewallgeek]

Perfect. Thanks for the recomendation. I guess I didn't even think to try SCP. I'll have to try out Veam's as I have about 1.5TB of replication pre-seeds to move to my branch office.

[DSTAVERT]

1.5TB will take a while even with fastSCP. Another possibility is using eSATA rather than USB. If you attached the the drive on the source and made it a datastore then disconnect and reconnect on the remote side you would be able to copy datastore to datastore.