Won't work as my ESXi is not licensed so doesn't have the backup API etcĢ. Other things I thought of that I don't think will work Seems to only support "move", is there a way to copy if I need to roll back? Connect the new vmhost to the SAN, and "move" the VMs to the new vmhost
DUPLICATE VM ESXI 6.5 UPGRADE
This will be super slow right (two copies), even if my local computer is in the same location?Ģ. Note that if you upgrade the ESXi free version with the lowest licensing packaging VMware Essentials, which is roughly 600, youll be able to use any backup tools available on the market, to protect your VMs and leverage CBT (changed block tracking). Copy from Datastore to local computer, then upload to new host Is there anything better or is this what I have to choose from? Both cases are using vSphere to connect to the SAN using the "browse datastore" feature.ġ.
I've done some research and found these options.
What is the best/easiest way to do this?Īn important note is the current vmhost is 4.1 ESXi free, so no nice paid features like vMotion etc. What I want to do is move the VMs from the SAN to the local storage on the new vmhost. The current vmhost doesn't have enough local storage to hold all the VMs, so I'm buying a larger server with more disk space to move the VMs too. UUID: 5fa8a747-f9af54c7-a815-005056b1e7c8I'm looking for some advice and hoping someone can help me. Though I try to change datastore UUID, I can't chang local datastore. To do so, you will need to run the following ESXCLI command:Įsxcli system settings advanced set -o /Net/FollowHardwareMac -i 1
DUPLICATE VM ESXI 6.5 UPDATE
To properly clone an existing Nested ESXi VM, you will need to perform the following two operations within the Nested ESXi VM prior to cloning.įirst Configuration - There is an advanced ESXi setting called FollowHardwareMac that will automatically update the VMkernel's MAC Address whenever the Virtual Machine's virtual network adapter MAC Addresses changes. You can see this System UUID by running the following ESXCLI command: esxcli system uuid get or by looking in esx.conf configuration file. The second issue is having a duplicated ESXi System UUID, also known as a VMkernel UUID which should normally be unique and can sometimes be used for tracking purposes.
The first issue is that you will get a duplicated MAC Address of the VMkernel interface(s) because the Nested ESXi configuration is exactly the same.You will get a brand new Virtual Machine that will have a unique MoRef ID, InstanceUUID, BIOS UUID and MAC Addresses for each of the virtual network adapters which you can see an example of this from the screenshot below.Įverything from outside of the guest OS looks great as we would expect but there is actually two issues from within ESXi that you may not be aware of. Please refer to the following two VMware KB articles for more information on this topic and įirst off, cloning of a Nested ESXi VM is possible and you can already do this today. UPDATE (07/01/21) - As of ESXi 7.0 Update 2, cloning an ESXi boot volume (Nested or Physical) is no longer safe and can lead to data corruption. However, I can see why this would be useful for anyone that does not have an automated deployment or just want to quickly deploy additional Nested ESXi instances by just cloning from an existing image and then manually change the networking configuration afterwards. For me personally, I do not have a use case for this since I just deploy additional ESXi instances using an automated Kickstart deployment. I often hear from users that they would like to be able to just clone from an existing Nested ESXi VM that has already been configured and just create additional Nested ESXi VM instances from that.