Migrating Vmware Server 1/2 Guests with IDE Hard Drives to ESXI4

First off, I have to say thanks to Justin B, he gave me the quick and dirty on doing the migration…”Try it. The worst that can happen is that it won’t work.” hehehehe. I had some old VMW server 2 guests that were originally built with IDE drives, so migrating to ESXI3.5 was way more trouble than it was worth…soooo I just kept an VMW server 2 machine running for these two VMs. With the introduction of ESXI4, they brought back the ability to create a guest with IDE drives! So, this may not be the most efficient method, but this is how I did it.

I first went to my ESXI4 server and create a new machine. I gave it a 1 gig IDE HD and the rest of the specs matched the original system.

Next I deleted the 1 gig HD and removed it from the system.

I then went to my VMWS2 machine and took a snap shot of my VM.

I then added SSH ability to my ESXI4 box:
1. alt-f1 then type the word unsupported.
2. root pw
3. vi /etc/inetd.conf
4. delete the “#” from ssh
5. services.sh restart

Using FastSCP, which is a freeware tool made by veeam, I created a temp folder under my new ESXI4’s server’s storage folder. I then copied the VMDK file over from the VMWS2 to the temp folder I created on the ESXI4 server. Default folder for VMWS2 under Centos is /var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines/.

To find your server paths for the vmkfstools command below:

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cd /vmfs/volumes/VMSTOR
ls

This will show you all of your server’s folders.

Once this completed, I coppied the temp folder’s VMDK file to the main folder with the following syntax:

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vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/4a087c30-eb3f8d2c-6e1b-0015174e6340/webserver/temp/webserver.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/4a087c30-eb3f8d2c-6e1b-0015174e6340/webserver/webserver.vmdk

After you are done with this, you can add a new HD to your ESXI4 machine, which will be the existing vmdk you just vmkfstool’d. Start your VM and then you will need to reconfigure your NIC. That should be it.

Like I said, this isn’t perfect, but it sure worked for me!