Moving VMs from ESXi4 to version 5

[rogernome]

Hi guys,

We need to deploy a few VMs asap to a ESXI4 server. We are buying new kit to configure a ESXI5 server. Is it easy to move the VMs from version 4 to 5 and doing some type of update? The gear will be different (HP to IBM).

Is there a better solution?

[prashanthbgoud]

VM are in a shared storage???

if so, you can add esx hosts to vCenter 5.0 and make a cold migration(power off the VM and migrate). It works!!

[rogernome]

No. I would manually copy off the vmware files and then copy to the datastore on the new system... not sure if that would work?

[prashanthbgoud]

local storage on the new kit?

from local datastore of ESX 4 to Local datastore of ESXi5?

[rogernome]

It is local on the old server, would be shared san on the new server.

[prashanthbgoud]

As you can perform Storage vMotion!! I recommend you to make the cold migration of the VM's of ESX4.

if you manually copy the files from one data store to other DataStore, configuration changes  needed.

Instead! use VMWare converter or Export the VMs as the OVF template and import them!

[rogernome]

New system would have vmotion, but the old server would not be attached to the san.

Configuration changes, these would just be to do with network etc correct?

[prashanthbgoud]

still in 5.X kit, you can migrate the VMs on local datastore to the shared storage!

ya, like disk configuration! the .vmdk file has the disk sectors of flat.vmdk file. you need to know starting and ending cylinder value and put that in the configuration file!

[rogernome]

So out of all the methods, what's the easiest way, and will work correctly?

[continuum]

Converter and OVF export will mess up the current network configuration of the VM  - so the most reliable way is to copy the complete VM-directories

[mrksiddiqui]

You can use winscp and Veem's scp tools to copy full VM from one host to another.