asked on Move/Duplicate ESXi5 disk
Bonjour,
ESXi is installed on 2 mirrored 300Gb SAS disks: I feel more secured with hard drive vs USB boot.
The VM and .vmsk are on 3 else 300Gb SAS disks (RAID 5)
I wish to use 2x smaller SATA disks (146Gb) for ESXi and thus be able to add the mirrored 300 Gb to the RAID 5, then increase the datastore and so the vmdisks usable space.
1) How can I "diskcopy" the ESXi 300Gb mirrored disk to the new 146Gb mirrored set ?
2) Is it possible in the same way to move ESXi from hard disk to USB ? and duplicate USB in order to have a spare ?
Thanks for your kind help,
Jean-Jacques
ESXi is installed on 2 mirrored 300Gb SAS disks: I feel more secured with hard drive vs USB boot.
The VM and .vmsk are on 3 else 300Gb SAS disks (RAID 5)
I wish to use 2x smaller SATA disks (146Gb) for ESXi and thus be able to add the mirrored 300 Gb to the RAID 5, then increase the datastore and so the vmdisks usable space.
1) How can I "diskcopy" the ESXi 300Gb mirrored disk to the new 146Gb mirrored set ?
2) Is it possible in the same way to move ESXi from hard disk to USB ? and duplicate USB in order to have a spare ?
Thanks for your kind help,
Jean-Jacques
VMwareStorage SoftwareServer Hardware
Last Comment
SAJJITER
ASKER
Hanccocka,
Solution 1 : Problem is not about cloning virtual machine, we use Veeam, but ESXi installation itself.
Solution 2 : This installation is not on an USB Flash drive or SD card.
So it seems 2nd solution will not allow a simple way to clone 330Gb hard drive ESXi installation to a 146 Gb one, and would oblige to install a MS Windows on the server to be able to use winimage.
Solution 3 : Referring to the FAQ, cloning a mirrored set of disk and cloning to smaller disk seems a tough job with G4L... If that was not relevant, where/how should I install G4L ?
Isn't there a magic CD I could boot on and do the job, whatever the source (300 Gb mirrored) and the target (146 Gb mirrored or USB Flash drive) ?
Thanks for your support,
Solution 1 : Problem is not about cloning virtual machine, we use Veeam, but ESXi installation itself.
Solution 2 : This installation is not on an USB Flash drive or SD card.
So it seems 2nd solution will not allow a simple way to clone 330Gb hard drive ESXi installation to a 146 Gb one, and would oblige to install a MS Windows on the server to be able to use winimage.
Solution 3 : Referring to the FAQ, cloning a mirrored set of disk and cloning to smaller disk seems a tough job with G4L... If that was not relevant, where/how should I install G4L ?
Isn't there a magic CD I could boot on and do the job, whatever the source (300 Gb mirrored) and the target (146 Gb mirrored or USB Flash drive) ?
Thanks for your support,
You only option is to clone using G4L, ESXi from 300Gb to 146Gb disks, but to be honest its hardly worth the effort
reinstall ESXi p, it only takes a few minutes to install, and if you make a backup of the config using VCLI, using the vicfgbackup.pl command, you can restore the config.
So in summary
1. yes use G4L if you really wantbto, but I would not bother.
2. yes, use G4L, but I would install new,restore backup config.
then use my article to clone, copy usb flash drive.
reinstall ESXi p, it only takes a few minutes to install, and if you make a backup of the config using VCLI, using the vicfgbackup.pl command, you can restore the config.
So in summary
1. yes use G4L if you really wantbto, but I would not bother.
2. yes, use G4L, but I would install new,restore backup config.
then use my article to clone, copy usb flash drive.
ASKER
Do VCLI and vicfgbackup.pl command work on ESXi 5 ?
A quick googling returns no HowTo but japanese !-)
A quick googling returns no HowTo but japanese !-)
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ASKER
Clear!
Thanks.
Thanks.
HOW TO: Clone or Copy a virtual machine in VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESX/ESXi 4.x or ESXi 5.0
How to Backup an ESXi installation on an USB Flash Drive or SD card, for security or redundancy.
You could try using G4L to image the disks.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/