ovftool<\/a>, which runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. What it does is allow you to export and import OVF files to a VMware host. The side benefit of that is that you can export from one and import to another all on one line.<\/p>\nSo I downloaded the Mac version and started coping. The basic syntax is like this:<\/p>\n
\r\n\r\n.\/ovftool -ds=TargetDataStoreName vi:\/\/root@sourcevSphereHost\/SourceVM vi:\/\/root@destvSphereHost\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\nSo if one of my VM’s is called mtdew, and I had it thin provisioned on the source host and wanted it the same on the destination host, and my datastore is called “vmwareraid” I would run this:<\/p>\n
\r\n.\/ovftool -ds=vmwareraid -dm=thin vi:\/\/root@ibmx3550\/mtdew vi:\/\/root@hpxw8600\r\n<\/pre>\nwhere ibmx3550 is the source server and hpxw8600 is the destination server. If you don’t specify the “-dm=thin” then when it is copied over, it will become a “thick” disk, aka us the entire space allocated when created. (I.E. a 50GB disk that only has 10GB in use would still use 50GB if the -dm=thin is not used.)<\/p>\n
There are some gotchas that you will have to look out for:<\/p>\n
\n- Network configs, I had one VM that had multiple internal network’s defined. Those were not defined on the new server, so there is a “mapping” that you have to do. I decided I didn’t need them on the new server so I just deleted them before I copied it over.<\/li>\n
- VM’s must be in a powered off state. I tried them in a “paused” state and it did not want to run right.<\/li>\n
- It takes time, depending on the speed of the network, disk, etc, it will take a lot of time to do this, and the VM’s have to be down while it happens. So definitely not a way to move “production” vm’s unless you have a maintenance window.<\/li>\n
- It will show % complete as it goes, which is cool, but the way it does it is weird. It will show the % at like 11 or 12 and then I turn my head and all of the sudden it says it is completed.<\/li>\n
- I did have some issues with a vm that I am not sure what happened to it, but when I try to copy it, I get an error: “Error: vim.fault.FileNotFound”… It may be due to me renaming something on the vm at some point in the past.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Hope this helps some other “home lab user”…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
About a year ago I purchased a 1U IBM X3550 server to run VMware vSphere 5 on. While it was cool to have a server that had dual quad procs and 8 gig of ram in it, the noise it put off was too much for my family room. (Just think of half a dozen … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Moving VM’s between hosts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,41,152],"tags":[362,155,520,361,483,521,153],"class_list":["post-1532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-howto","category-tips","category-vmware","tag-moving-vms","tag-esxi","tag-howto","tag-ovftool","tag-tips","tag-vmware","tag-vsphere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sungeek.net\/unixwiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sungeek.net\/unixwiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sungeek.net\/unixwiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sungeek.net\/unixwiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sungeek.net\/unixwiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1532"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sungeek.net\/unixwiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1537,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sungeek.net\/unixwiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions\/1537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sungeek.net\/unixwiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sungeek.net\/unixwiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sungeek.net\/unixwiz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}