How to properly move two VM's from one host to another.

I have purchased a new server to host both my RDP servers that are running on a less than adaqute host and would like to move them to this new server/host. I am running ESXi 6.0 and have these servers registered on vSphere. The server(s) are using local storage but the new server is using SSD's vs 10k hard drives. Also, the new server has 10gb NIC's instead of 1gb NIC's so this should improve speed as well.

My question is can I move these two VM's from one host to another both at the same time or do I need to migrate one at a time. Also, on the current server I have two iSCSI connections to this host however I do not use storage on either of the NAS devices so do I need to disconnect the iSCSI connections before migration? If so how do I do this? I have looked on the net and found how to create the iSCSI connections but not how to remove them.

Also, is there way to backup the complete configuration of the host or will snapshots be enough if the migration goes bad and I need to revert back to the original server and configuration.
TimSr. System AdminAsked:
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Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert / EE Fellow)VMware and Virtualization ConsultantCommented:
There is probably no Proper way to move them, most of us use Storage vMotion or vMotion if you have licenses for it...

If you do not have licenses for storage vMotion, then you will have to look at alternative methods to migrate/move/copy....

Backup and Restore is one method, Export and Import is another method, or you could use VMware Converter as a last resort.

This is the Export and Import method, I wrote an EE Article how to do it...

Part 10: HOW TO: Backup (Export) and Restore (Import) virtual machines to VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5.1 for FREE

My question is can I move these two VM's from one host to another both at the same time or do I need to migrate one at a time. Also, on the current server I have two iSCSI connections to this host however I do not use storage on either of the NAS devices so do I need to disconnect the iSCSI connections before migration? If so how do I do this? I have looked on the net and found how to create the iSCSI connections but not how to remove them.

You can migrate VMs at the same time, if you have the network bandwidth, but you could end up slowing the process down....

If your VMs were on shared storage, you would not need to move them between local storage, unless you want the VMs to be on local SSD ?

My question is can I move these two VM's from one host to another both at the same time or do I need to migrate one at a time. Also, on the current server I have two iSCSI connections to this host however I do not use storage on either of the NAS devices so do I need to disconnect the iSCSI connections before migration? If so how do I do this? I have looked on the net and found how to create the iSCSI connections but not how to remove them.

There is no need to back hosts, if just moving VMs, I would recommend you COPY VMs, rather than move, so you have got a fall back if things go wrong....

this depends on what licenses you have access to as Storage vMotion is safe

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TimSr. System AdminAuthor Commented:
That is very helpful and will probably use the Clone/Copy function to do this move. Now on the removing of iScsi connections is there a way to do that? I ask because I was trying to reconfigure this machine in order to give each VM their own NIC but it said I couldn't move the VM because of the iSCSI connection. Maybe I was mistaken by what the error message said but would like to know who to do this if needed.
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert / EE Fellow)VMware and Virtualization ConsultantCommented:
If you have enabled iSCSI on the host, you cannot disable it.

But you can remove the bindings, and network interfaces for it.

Not sure why you want to give each VMs it's own nic....
TimSr. System AdminAuthor Commented:
Thank you Andrew. I am still learning VM and you seem to always have the right answers. I wanted to have seperate NIC's for a VM on the host as a means of increasing the speed of the VM. I have two RDP servers with 35 users on each going through a 1GB NIC and felt it was bottle-necking my throughput. I have since migrated those RDP servers to a new host with faster CPU's and 10gb NIC's which seem to handling the load just fine.
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert / EE Fellow)VMware and Virtualization ConsultantCommented:
Just create a vSwitch, with at least two network interface uplinks, and connect all VMs to that vSwitch.

Make sure you are using the VMXNET3 in the VM, NOT the E1000!

I think you will find the network interfaces were not the bottleneck.
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