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Thor2923Flag for United States of America

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copying VM files from stand alone vmhost to my farm, not all files appear to copy over

I have a stand alone vmhost that is running 4.1 and a farm using 4.1. I want to migrate my main SQL server off of its stand alone host into the farm. I have done this a couple times before with less significant servers, but want to make sure I understand everything before I begin this. My procedure is as follows.

1. login into vsphere on the stand alone
2  Power down VM I want to move and take snapshot
3. Browse datastore and download the vmfiles to a shared folder (with sufficient) space.
4. login to vsphere on the farm
5. browse to datastore and create a directory for the "moved" vm
6. upload the files from my shared folder to the directory I just created
7. Once all the files are copied, add the VM to inventory by right-clicking the .vmx file and selecting “add to inventory”

This all works fine, and then I can power up the moved vm in the FARM.

My question is, for example, my "test" vm is named test and I have the files downloaded to my "third party shared folder" they appear in the list:

test-000001.vmdk
test-000001-delta.vmdk
test.nvram
test.vmdk
test.vmsd
test.vmx
test.vmxf
test-flat.vmdk
test-Snapshot1.vmsn
wmware.log

I swear I have uploaded all 10 files to the farm, but only 8 of them are displayed.
I do not see "test-flat.vmdk" or "test-000001-delta.vmdk"

Can anyone explain if this is normal? I recall having fewer files before when I have done this procedure, but since it was less important servers and everything worked, I did not worry too much about it. All input is welcome

Thanks
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Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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I was taking a snap shot to put one of our applications people at ease. He is not comfortable with me doing this move and I want to assure him everything will be exactly as it was before I did the move...I will check into your method also
Do not use a snapshot, bad practice!

e.g. even Storage vMotion is not supported with a Snapshot!
BTW I am not using the converter, I just copy the files from the vmhost to a file share and then push them up to our vcenter. We have tried to use the converter before and not had any success. We always get an error, but doing it manually has worked several times. I just do not seem to understand what files, particularly the file with "flat" in its name seems to disappear