Migrate only VMDK to another Datastore without Vcenter.

Posted on by batezippi
  1. power off the VM
  2. make sure the VM doesn’t have active snashots!!! (i.e. no delta .vmdk files in the VM’s folder)
  3. create a new target folder on the destination datastore
  4. clone the virtual disk, using the following command
    vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/source-ds/vm-folder/virtual-disk.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/target-ds/vm-folder/virtual-disk.vmdk
    if you want the destination virtual disk to become thin provisioned, append -d thin to the above command line
    for details see e.g. https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1028042
  5. from the GUI, edit the VM’s settings, i.e. remove the migrated virtual disk from the VM’s configuration (do not yet select delete from disk), save the VM’s settings,, then open the settings again and add the existing virtual disk from the target location to the VM (make sure you select the same adapter, e.g. scsi0:1 to which the original virtual disk was connected)

If everything works as expected you may then carefiully delete the obsolete/migrated virtual disk file(s) from the source datasatore.

CategoriesIT