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Seishun
Asked: 2010-07-13 04:50:18 +0800 CST

vCenter Converter Standalone cannot copy virtual machines from one ESXi server to another

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I have two ESXi servers, both updated with the latest patches through the Host Update Utility. One of the ESXi servers is a new install, other was around for about 8 months without any problems arising. All VMs are ESXi native, created on the old server (I have serveral Windows 2003 and Arch Linux VMs). After installing ESXi on the new server and updating both servers, I tried moving VMs from the old one. However, the job fails every time with the status:

FAILED: The operation is not supported on the object.

However, I am still able to convert ESXi VM to the VMware Server VM (it's installed on my own workstation). I have necessary sysprep files in the Converter directory, both hypervisors and the Converter are the latest versions available... What's wrong? What should I do to be able to move VMs between ESXi servers?

UPD: Converter also worked in the past (about 4 months ago), while I templorarily installed ESXi on a whitebox to test whether conversion works at all.

vmware-esxi vmware-converter

5 Answers

  1. Why not export the VM's as virtual appliances on the source host and import them on the destination host? That's the way I move VM's around and it works like a charm. (Of course I'm a complete VMware neophyte).

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  2. This error is a bit misleading, it (usually) refers to a problem with the virtual devices you've assigned to the machine.

    When you run through the converter wizard, how far are you getting before it fails? I suspect you've got all the way through the wizard, can inspect the source, can browse the target, and are back at the job screen when it tanks?

    Try disabling any kind of customization of the VM, in the wizard, on the last page.

    Check the devices you have assigned to the virtual machine, and remove everything but the bare min. Check that your defined VLAN networks are available on both ESXi machines and are labelled the same.

    Are you using the latest version of Converter? (4.0.1)

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  3. Are you just trying to move the VM from one server to the other to have them run on a different server? I would look at just copying the VM's configuration and drive files over with the storage managing utility (maybe using a shared storage directory as an in-between). It'll take awhile, especially if the files are large, but then you can just tell the new server to create VM's based on those drive files (pre-existing). As long as the versions are matched, this should work just fine.

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  4. Are you trying to do some kind of hot copy, or are you shutting down the VMs before taking the image?

    I think the converter may work best on machines that are shutdown, so it isn't having to snapshot memroy etc. Also, check any snapshots you might have of those VMs. That may make the process more complex. It is possible that converting to VMWare Server is working as it isn't trying to convert any ESXi specific features.

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  5. When I have VMs that I can not move across ESX servers, I am using netcat to transfer the VM content over network.

    Here are the steps I am using for this:

    • Create a new VM on the destination with the same configuration as the source (especially the disk size and layout)
    • Boot the source and destination VMs from a rescue Linux (a CD/DVD, or from a PXE server)
    • on the destination I run: nc -l 10000 > /dev/sda where 10000 is the port
    • on the source I run: nc destination_ip 10000 < /dev/sda where destination_ip is the IP address of the destination inside the rescue Linux
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