It aint sexy, but it works! So I've been bashing my brains against the wall this weekend (painful, I know) trying to get virtual machines off of a VMWare Server (v1.0.2 for the super-geeks out there) and onto a Virtual Infrastructure ESX 3.5 server.
I tried the copy the VMDK file thing but no luck. I tried doing a direct conversion from a Virtual Center Management server... uh uh. Finally, it must have been God Himself whispering in my ear, it occurs to me "Why don't you run VMWare Converter 3.0, convert the VM to your ESX 3.0 server, then migrate the newly converted VM to ESX 3.5?"
Wouldn't you know, IT WORKED! The new VCMS system uses a Converter Server 4.0, so it doesn't appear to function as a local install on the VM you want to convert, like 3.0 does. So here's the details:
- Install VMWare Convert 3.0 on the VM you want to convert.
- Launch the application (obviously)
- Click "Import Machine"
- Click "Next"
- Select "Physical Computer" and click "Next"
- Select "This local machine" and click "Next"
- Select your volume options (you can increase or decrease the virtual disk at this point) and click "Next" and the "Next" again
- Under destination, select "VMWare ESX Server or VirtualCenter virtual machine" and click "Next"
- Enter you ESX machine information and click "Next" (remember, this doesn't work directly with an ESX 3.5 server, so you will need 3.0.
- Type a name for you virtual machine and click "Next"
- Select the Host Resource Pool and click "Next"
- Select the storage location for the new VM and click "Next"
- Set you NIC parameters. Be sure to connect it to the LAN network on the destination machine for at least one of your NICs and click "Next"
- You can customize if you'd like, but that's beyond the scope of this post so just click "Next"
- Once the machines completes it's conversion, you then follow the instruction for migrating from ESX 3.0 to ESX 3.5 and you're DONE!
Like I said, it ain't sexy, but it works!! :)
Everything You Need to Know About Hybrid Cars
36 minutes ago
3 comments:
You do realize that the vmware converter will automatically import vmware server VMs with just a few mouse clicks? The converter is part of virtual center. Even if you don't own virtual center, you can run it in eval for 60 days which is more than enough time to import everything. Nothing like doing it the hard way.
Actually, I tried the "few clicks" method you described and it kept failing during the conversion process after getting about 90% of the way through it. This method is a work around that I just happened to figure out by trial and error.
I don't advertise that I'm a VMWare expert, by any means, but this method actually worked pretty well. If there's an easier method, that I wasn't aware of, no skin off my nose. :)
How were you doing the "few clicks" method? Were you telling the Converter that you were converting a Physical Machine or were you trying to import a Standalone virtual machine? I was also unable to get the converter to work when telling it that it was using a physical machine, so I instead setup a samba share on my VMWare server and pointed ESX at the vmx files for the machines I wanted to bring over. Worked like a charm.
Post a Comment