Migrating VMs into ESXI

Once VMs are in ESXI, sloshing them between hosts is easy. But moving existing hardware and VMs into ESXI can be a little tricky. VMware provides a tool called WMware vCenter Converter Standalone. This tool can only be run on windows, but can convert machines that are running both linux and windows. It is currently installed on the msu-winsvc1 VM on senna.

Notes

The GUI interface is mostly self explanatory, but there are a few caveats that are unclear that should be noted

• Powered on VMs cannot be moved via a host-to-host copy, but you CAN use the online migration (the option that is used for hardware -> virtual conversion) on VMs. This method minimizes downtime, as the actual copying of a VM can take up to a day.
• In the options screen while configuring a migration, take note of the settings for the "Helper VM". This VM coordinates the transfer between the source and destination and obviously needs reasonable network configuration. By default it requests an IP address via DHCP, which will almost invariably fail on all of our networks.

-- JamesKoll - 17 Feb 2014