ESXi 6.5 standalone host help export big VM ?

Emad R

I am using the build in export, and it is proving to be difficult.
Maybe not VMware fault directly, but still they should have forseen this.

VM size around 50 GB, and every time it is failing to download using Chrome or Chromuim. Will try Firefox soon.
Chromuim seems more stable it reached 44 GB afterwards it stated a network error.
No support for retries.

Previous method was to use the C# client, and it worked 100% without any issue.

I am using Fedora OS for management + Chromium of the ESXi host. I do have Gigolo (WinSCP alternative) but seeing the VM using SFTP you will see the VMDK-flat file worth of 1TB. and not the real used space. Thin VM. So you need to rely on an export method.

So guys are you aware of any tool that can help me, Also I dislike the export giving me 2 files:
vmdk + ovf
are you aware of method that allows ova directly ?

I think if I can generate OVA from command line on the host itself, and then copy that or download that, that looks more reliable.

So writing this to raise awareness, cause newer ESXI 6.5 update 1 refuses the old C# VMware Vsphere client.

Thanks.

Emad R

This post is deleted!

Emad R

@emad-r

This failed with network timeout.
I did disable the auto logout option from web ESXi, and made it unlimited.

Studying the OVF tool command line currently...

Emad R

@emad-r

Trying this, which seems to be winner:

https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/ovf/

VMware-ovftool on Fedora instead of downloading VM using the chrome browser export GUI tool

Run as root to install:

sh ./VMware-ovftool-4.2.0-5965791-lin.x86_64.bundle

Then create OVA via:

ovftool --machineOutput vi://root:[email protected]/GF_EMR_Server_121 vm.ova

It seems it can also create OVA files, which is basically a tar archive of the VM definition + VMDK file.

still progressing will feedback shortly. What is more interesting this tool can be downloaded for Windows/Linux/Mac OS

Now ESXi resembles Linux, thus virtuallyghetto site actually installs OVF tool inside ESXi datastore, allowing you to import/export vms directly host 2 host.

ovftool -dm=thin -ds=datastore1 vi://[email protected]/vmname vi://[email protected]

dbeato

@emad-r said in ESXi 6.5 standalone host help export big VM ?:

So writing this to raise awareness, cause newer ESXI 6.5 update 1 refuses the old C# VMware Vsphere client.
Thanks.

Yeah, the Vsphere Client was removed on version 6.5 even for Windows as well. The OVF Tool is what has been recommended to export and import...