Question

ESXi 4 Host rebuild - Guest move

Asked by: BryanOakley

Hi

Just a sanity check really.

I have a test single ESXi 4 host on DL585 G2 which currently has 3 VM's on a single local datastore (in progress of creatng a full vCenter farm but for now just this test box).

I want to rebuild the underlying local storage array so I am doing the following (in lieu of any backup software)

1: Copy-out all the relevant files from the datastore to a network location
2: break current logical array and then new logical drive build
3: Re-install ESXi 4
4: Copy-in all the files from the network share to the new datastore
5: Fire-up the guest VM's (maybe have to re-register them)

I would appreciate a sanity check to make sure I am progressing correctly and will not lose any data?

In our new world we will be using veeam etc but for this server I just want a quick and safe psuedo backup/restore.

I appreciate any confirmation or comments on this.

Cheers
Bry

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Asked On
2009-11-05 at 13:10:06ID24876101
Tags

ESXi 4

Topics

VMware

,

Hypervisor

,

Virtualization

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: paulsolovPosted on 2009-11-05 at 14:09:54ID: 25754601

Plan looks good.  If you have snapshots on the VMs I would apply them before doing this just in case, otherwise this should work.  You may want to use Veeam FastSCP, I believe it works with ESXi to copy over the VMs

 

by: ryder0707Posted on 2009-11-05 at 18:28:13ID: 25756181

I think you forgot the most important thing, or the 1st step you should do

To backup host config
vicfg-cfgbackup.pl server <host_name> -s <backup_filename>

Then to restore your backup config to host. Host will need to restart
vicfg-cfgbackup.pl server <host_name> -l <backup_filename>

 

by: BryanOakleyPosted on 2009-11-06 at 02:40:21ID: 25757996

Please accept my massive thanks both ryder0707: & paulsolov:

Cheers
Bry

 

by: BryanOakleyPosted on 2009-11-06 at 02:41:59ID: 25758002

Ah hold on - I tried to accept both answers? I shall have to contact EE to get this rectified.
Apologies for this but massive thanks to both of you chaps.

Cheers
Bry

 

by: BryanOakleyPosted on 2009-11-07 at 13:40:28ID: 25768179

>Hi

> I just recently asked a question and got 2 replies, for which I wanted
> to accept both solutions. I selected "Accept multiple solution" but
> for some reason (or user error :-) it only accepted the first answer.
>
> Is it possible to get this rectified?
> The questions heading is:
> 05/11/09 500 ESXi 4 Host rebuild - Guest move A PAQ VMware ?
>
> I would like to split the points (500) to 250 each to:
> paulsolov:
> ryder0707:
> Many thanks
>
> Bry

 

by: BryanOakleyPosted on 2009-11-14 at 01:27:50ID: 31650737

Hi ryder070 & paulsolov

Finally got to split the points - Apologies for any error caused in the first place.

Thanks so much for your clarification(s).

Thanks so much
Bry

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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