Moving virtual machine from local storage ESX2 to SAN on ESX3

[eraH]

I'm going to be moving virtual machines that are currently on the local storage of a server running ESX 2.5 to a SAN with VI3 servers connected to it.
Anybody done this, can I just copy the virtual disks over to the SAN and create a new VM on VI3?
Or is it better to copy all files from ESX2 to the SAN and register the VM on VI3, then upgrade the hardware and VMWare tools.

 

[aistswc]

maybe not the most efficient method, but we simply ran converter. I don't know about 2.5, but the file systems in 1.2 are slightly different than in 3.0 - meaning a simple copy of the files won't work.

steve c.
IT Architect
Lexmark International

 

[Arisap]

You need to use a conversion utility like VMware Converter (free) or PlateSpin (not free but much more robust). The file format of VMFS2 and VMFS3 are radically different. In VMFS3 the file named server.vmdk is 343 bytes as it is a pointer to the actual vmdk file called server-flat.vmdk there are also additional config files (server.vmxf) that are needed.

 

[eraH]

My problem is that the ESX2 servers have local storage and aren't being managed by VirtualCenter. So I can't use VMWare Converter.

I've found it a simple matter of copying the disks to the SAN, creating a new VM and pointing it to the disks. You will then be asked to upgrade the hardware and you are done.

Considering the size of the disks and time wasted waiting for the disks to copy I've decided to use esxMigrator. It's cheaper to buy the software and licenses than doing it manually.

Thanks for your input about this.