Transferred Vmdk and Vmx files to new datastore. How do I fire it up? Not working

If it's been added to the inventory, Power On!

where's the screenshot?

I missed it..oops. Re-attached.
Vmware.jpg

this indicates a file is missing or in the wrong location.

upload screen shots of the datastore and folder the VM is located in.

how did you copy?

Okay, so I'll post from beginning:

I've realised some discrepencies. Okay, so picture 1 shows the original VM (you can see it sits on two datastores?)

Picture two and three shows the datastores where they content is located.

Picture 4 shows the location where I had backed up this VM using Symantec Backup Exec. However the backup only shows as being around 66gb, whereas the original datastore shows as being 100gb?
Original-setting.jpg
Original-setting-2.jpg
Original-setting-3.jpg
Restore-location.jpg

Okay, I understand what is going on.

the easiest way to get this resolved, is to remove the disks from the VM, (remove from inventory) not from disk.

Add the disks back, edit the VM, select Add disk, select existing disk, and browse to the datastore.

this is because the VMX file has references to different datastores.

Just one question though. My backup from Symantec was a full 66gb. But can you see that the used storage says '100gb'? Do you think the backup might have compressed the file hence it is smaller?

yes, or it's just copied used space.

is this how you remove from inventory? (pic attached)
Remove-from-inventory.jpg

that's correct.

I've removed it entirely from inventory.

I went to the datastore again and right clicked onto the .vmx. Added to a folder called 'Wiki'.

I then went in and tried to remove the original disk. The error comes up as follows (attached).
Vmware-Invalid.jpg

I've taken pic 1, as the location it is looking in. It's just not right.

I've taken pic 2 for you. Look at where it's looking in for the VMDK file. That is now where it should be. Even when I tried to change it's location to the correct place which is 'Production_Datastore3' it won't go there.
VM-config.jpg
Datastore.jpg

remove the references in the VM settings, and then move the vmdks into the correct vm folder.

Which references?

The Vmdk's are in the correct location.
Vmdk.jpg

okay, if you add the VMDK? manually....

are these in the correct locations vmdk and vmx files?

how did you copy these files?

I mean they are all in completely different datastores than they were in the original place.
In the original datastore, the VMDK and .VMX files were in different locations to one another.

Would this matter?

So I copied using symantec backup exec to the local server. From the local server, I copied them across the network onto another local server.

I then went onto the Vcenter. I browsed to a free datastore. I browsed to it and created a folder called 'RDPTemp'. I uploaded from the local server, all the files I'd copied into this location. That's it. Added the 'Vmx' to the inventory. That's all I did.

Should I be adding .VMX files to one datastore and .VMDK to another?

Don't get it at all.

I'm trying to redo it all from scratch.

I've noticed that the original VMDK files were on a datastore with a 1mb block size. I'm moving it from the 8mb size I put them on, to a datastore with a 1mb block size.

I'll then put the .vmx file in the 8mb file (same as the original) and see if that works. Otherwise, I might go nuts.

What you have done is correct, all files should remain in a single folder, the vmx and vmdk.

if you add the RDPTemp.vmdk to the VM, and is there an error Power On error?

the vmdk is certainly too large for a 1MB block size as it exceeds 256GB.

what you can do, also to check if the vmdk is correct, is create a new custom VM, using the same spec, e.g. cpu, memory, nic, and add the existing hard drive

This what I get if I do that:
Vmware.jpg

check the VM settings are the same as the original, and pay special attention to the storage controller, is it the same?

can you screenshot the original VM files and location, followed by a screenshot of the VM settings

I'm just on the phone with Vmware. THey tell me Hanccocka that the actual VM may have not been shut down correctly. So instead of Start->Shut Down, we did a 'Power Off Guest'.

And I backed it up from there. Is that a possibility?

And under no circumstances am I undermining you either. This is an ongoing call with these guys....

should not make any difference if you Power Off Guest, or Shutdown.

The VM should still be good.

Okay, I've got snapshots ffrom the original for you.

From the settings to the datastore locations.
Original.jpg
Original-2.jpg
Original-3.jpg
Original-4.jpg
Original-5.jpg

Hanccocka, the worst part is that when I even add the .VMDK manually and it comes up with that boot error, I used a Windows 2008 ISO file to go in and attempt a 'repair'. It doesn't even recognise any partitions. It sees 0 Windows installations.

Must be something up with my attempt. Maybe I should try to do another backup again?

I assume the original server still boots?

how to proceed.....

lets try one more time..

delete the new copy you have, get rid of it all.

create a new folder. e.g. RDPTEMP1

copy all the files from FCDESX01_Internal02-8MB_BLKSZ/RDPTemp

to RDPTEMP1

those files are configuration files, *.xml, *.vmx, *.nvram, *.vmsd, *.vmxf

copy all the files from FCDESX01_Internal01-1MB_BLKSZ/RDPTemp

those are *.vmdk

to RDPTEMP1

now, it's possible that the VMX file has a hard vmdk link to the old VMDK in a seperate datastore.

Right Click add to Inventory, and see if you can power ON, if not, remove the virtual disk, and add manually.

Power On.

Hanccocka, I have had to download it from the Datastore onto the local server. From there it will be copied cross-network.

However, whilst it's downloading the file RDPTemp.vdk is downloading as RDPTemp-flat.
Vmware-download.jpg

correct, the VMware vSphere datastore browser does not show, that the virtual machine disk is made up of two files:-

RDPTemp-flat.vmdk (large file)
RDPTemp.vmdk (small file)

I'm now wondering if the file copy is getting corrupted!

Just the download from the datastore to the local server is taking over 3hrs.

Then I have to copy it cross-network which will be overnight. Here's hoping this time it works man.

Thank you as always man.

I've started the process. However, it's gone past 4minutes and I'm at 0's for everything. It's 0 for all processes, 0kbs.

In the category it has 'Bottleneck: detecting' greyed out.

Something up there? Is it the ports that are being used that should be changed?

is this using veeam?

Yup:((

I mean it detected the Vcentre. It detected the source and destination. It went all the way to the way you describe. I did 'Finish' (and unchecked the tickbox..heaven forbid). And left it there for 10mins. Nada...didn't move.

you are not using Free ESXi?

It was a version which was installed on the server. It says at the bottom corner License: Enterprise. Period: EXPIRED.

Is this why?

oh dear!

why has your licensed expired, and what do you intend to do about it?

I don't use it. That's why. It was installed by other guy and I've just joined two months ago. So I'm getting my head around this beast network.

Is this why it didn't transfer?

There is an upgrade so that I can get a free trial and key? Or can I uninstall this and get free version installed?

Veeam does not have access to the licensed APIs.

You could reinstall ESXi, do not apply a license, it will then run in 60 day evaluation mode, with all the bells and whistles.

Free license will not work.

Make sure its a clean install, not an upgrade.

Will do.

Honestly man, I can't tell you how grateful I am for your input and help on this. Absolute legend. I'll keep you posted; you may have to kip by the time I give feedback. Either way I'll keep you posted.

Out of curiosity though, if we did have an enterprise licence then that would still be okay right? It would work?

Yes, its not normal for an Expired License!

Ill dig out another EE article for unstalling ESXi

Hold hold....i'm referring to Veeam licenses NOT Esxi...lol.

Great, now I've gone ahead and begun uninstalling Veeam..lol.

Our Esxi is fine and licensed. I think I mis-read and it was miscommunication here. Sorry.

So based on what I was saying prior, we're using fully licenses Esxi hosts.

The Veeam version I was using said: Enterprise, license period; Expired. That's why I thought maybe because it expired it would not do the migration.

Does you Veeam version support Quick Migration?

otherwise, install VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.0 in the VM, and create a V2V

see my EE Articles for Hints and Tips, videos of how VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.0 i works.


HOW TO:  P2V, V2V for FREE - VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.0

HOW TO: Improve the transfer rate of a Physical to Virtual (P2V), Virtual to Virtual Conversion (V2V) using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.0

Yes it does support Quick Migration.

Just a quick thing: the ping rates between Vcentre server at my end and the Esxi host at the Datacentre is around 75-80ms on average.

Yes, that's okay and reasonable.

Okay, there's a stage where I can select 'Force Veeam Quick Migration'. Should I select it?

yes!

Vmware.jpg

make sure you ticked the box, do not delete copy on source. (so it leaves a copy for you!)

You mean 'unticked' the box.

It's 3am man and the transfer rate is something like 60kb/s. This is supposed to be a Gigabit network. I've had to stop it as it'll take until next week at this rate.

I've had to do it manually matey. Download from datastore to local server.
From local server cross-network link to another server on the same IP range. Then from there on to the other datastore.

Shouldn't one be able to transfer directly from datastore at one Datacentre to another datastore at another without all this ridiculousness?

I'll make a new post about the whole bandwidth/throughput etc and how to maximise it.

Yes, you can do it from vCenter Migrate?

Sadly not. The datastores at the datacentre side, have been configured with disks locally (screenshot 1). I've tried doing the 'migrate' but the two datastores don't see each other.  And the ones at my side where everything is a cluster and has properly created SAN configurations is screenshot 2.
screenshot-1.jpg
screenshot-2.jpg

okay, if you have no shared storage between the hosts to transfer.

but you should be able to Migrate from one local host to another local host, if networking permits.

otherwise, you will have to carry on with that you are doing, and would recommend VMware Converter.

Convert to VMware Workstation format, and then re-import this into your new ESXi server.

But all this is dependant upon networking speed.

I'll try that if this doesn't work.

Check this out, so I have transferred the file across. And when I power on, I get the error attached. Why why why?!!
Vmware-snapshot.jpg

not transferred correctly, or faulty.

So guess what? We did everything it still didn't work.

The guy at Vmware said 'it could be locked'. So we migrated everything off from this host, Esxhost4. Decided to reboot it to 'unlock' the file.

Guess what? Host never came back up. Thank god we have a cluster or I'd be toast. The luck!

I'm going to close this case Hanccocka, it's the longest post I've done and it's been incredibly helpful. Thank you for always being there man. I truly appreciated it.

thanks for your kind comments, glad to assist.