Moving from VMWare Server 2.0 to vSphere? How to?

[axohq]

Hello-

I hope that someone can point me in the right direction here.

I am running VMWare Server 2.0 on a Windows 2300 R2 box. After proving virtualization to management, I have purchased vSphere. Now I see I need some help in determining the best place to start with this migration project. I have several questions I hope someone can help with.

#1. The VMWare Server 2.0 is the box now have is the one I want to use with VSphere. The problem I have is that I have four virtual servers running on this box. Is there a conversion utility to move them from and off this box VMware Server 2.0 to vSphere environment? Is it possible to move them to something like a Dell EqualLogix box (which I have) and move them back into the vSphere environment? Do I need to be concerned with anything? If so, what?

#2. I have four physical servers I will be converting to vSphere? Is there a tool to help with this?

Tips, links to documentation and of course any help is greatly appreciated!!

Thank you!

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Welcome to the VMware community forums!

Basically the answer boils down to using VMware vCenter Converter

But if you want to re-use the same box for vSphere/ESX you do have a bit of a chicken and egg problem with that for the existing VM's

You can however copy the VM's on there to external storage and import these manually into vSphere later on.

In order to do so, you might have to use the vmkfstools command line tool to import the disks to the correct format.

Hope this helps,

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[axohq]

Wil -

Thanks for the reply!

After playing around this afternoon, this looks to be the ticket I needed.

Only issue I seem to have is that I cannot convert them directly to the SAN as the convertor wants a machine name to point to. I think I will just have to play around with it some more but at least this gets me going.

Thanks again,

Mark

[wila]

Hi,

Yes you are correct, VMware converter wants a host to migrate the VM towards, so unless you can't setup a host on another server, you'll have to copy the VM to external storage. If that's the way you end up going, then you can post any questions you have in regards to importing the VM's manually down here.

thanks for the points,

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com