I am currently investigating terraform, is it possible to create VM with Terraform on Esxi 6 without vCenter Server? Since I only have free version of Esxi 6 installed. Thank you in advance.
I have a provider available that can talk directly to esxi without vcenter.
https://github.com/josenk/terraform-provider-esxi
I figure, that using Terraform, specifically the official vSphere provider without vCenter might be possible, but because Terraform internally uses the govmomi library that in turn uses the vSphere API it is not possible on the free Hypervisor, because it only allows read-only access to the vSphere API.
Hence, you need at least the Essential License and with it comes vCenter.
You can import an image without the APIs.
You can't clone images. Attempting to do so would give you errors such as https://communities.vmware.com/thread/310721?db=5 Can't clone a VM (The operation is not supported on the object").
The next question is if importing is enough. I don't know.
It does require vcenter. Vsphere essentials kit is an inexpensive option for a lab / dev environment setup.
Related
I have just installed VMware ESXi 7 as a virtual machine just for learning. I have seen it is feasible to create nested vms using VMware Player Workstation plus Intel chipset: my testing purpose is to create a virtual machine inside a virtualized ESXi server.
Actually I cannot install any vm, probably due to the fact I have not created any datastore yet.
In order to create a datastore I thought to edit the partition of the free space avalaible (for a linux vm 20GB are enough), but when I try to edit partition I get such summary in which I cannot configure anything at all (see pics).
Have you any suggestion?
When you install SO it's not a good practice to add it as a datastore. Please turn off you VM and add another disk to ESXI. After you boot up server again you will be able to create a new datastore.
I have a production server that hosts 3 VM's over Esxi 5.5.
Back in the day, I used a customized HP image to get ESXi installed on the Proliant server.
I have purchased a new server with Esxi 6.7 installed and wonder if I can move my 3 VM's hosted on the old HP server onto my new server (running ESXi 6.7).
The HP server sits 1500Km away so is challenging to test.
Did anyone come across any challenges removing VM's from one Host to another running different ESXi versions?
Thank you
You won't have any problems in the transportation process, but need to decide which transportation method use.
You can install vCenter Server Appliance then migrate with Storage vMotion.
If you do not want to install vCenter, you can turn the VMs power off and get an OVF copy to export (more on OVF here on vmware.com's site). You can then add this again from the deploy OVF section.
Link below for Vcenter installation.
https://www.tayfundeger.com/vcenter-server-appliance-6-7-kurulumu-bolum-1.html
https://www.tayfundeger.com/vcenter-server-appliance-6-7-kurulumu-bolum-2.html
Thanks.
VM objects are fairly backwards compatible and most go back quite a few years and a handful of versions, so you should be fine between those particular versions.
The biggest consideration is normally how to get the VM object data from point A to point B. Example:
Are you using storage based replication?
Are you SCPing the data directly from the hosts?
Are you exporting the VMs, transporting the data, and importing them?
Etc.
Yes, you can. The things you must take into account are:
1 - Hardware version. It's not possible to downgrade HW version through the ESXi UI. This won't be a problem in your case, as you are moving the VMs to a higher ESXi version that still supports ESXi 5.5's HW version. Once you have the VMs in the target server you can decide to upgrade to the most recent HW version for your new platform.
2 - VMFS version. ESXi 6.7 allows the use of VMFS-5 or VMFS-6, which is a newer version of the VMWare file system. You can indeed move VMs from VMFS-5 to VMFS-6. Nonetheless, unless it's unavoidable to do so, I would use the same VMFS version, as performing a cross-file system migration can make you fall into some incompatibilities that you should avoid.
3 - You will have to move your VMs over IP. If you don't own a VMWare license that allows you to migrate them, you can use an ESXi backup tool from 33hops.com that is compatible with unlicensed Free ESXi.
This XSIBackup-DC is a well-tested tool that allows to live migrate VMs over IP in licensed or unlicense versions of ESXi.
I'm looking for ways to migrate the server from physical to GCP cloud but there is a lot of challenges to be considered.
My plans are :
Lift and shift the data | thinking of this if not using velostrata
Migrate using GCP velostrata.
Migrate using velostrata was not so clear there is no defined way to do it. link -> https://cloud.google.com/migrate/compute-engine/docs/4.5/how-to/prepare-vms-servers/physical-servers
By going through the documentation it looks to be migrated to VMware first then to the GCP cloud.
Can you guys let me simplified the steps and confirmation on this?
GCP has a couple of options to migrate instances.
Import disk
The import tool supports most virtual disk file formats, including VMDK and VHD
This feature has the following limitations:
Linux virtual disks must use grub as the bootloader.
UEFI bootloaders are not supported for either Windows or Linux.
Linux virtual disks must meet the same requirements as custom images,
including support for Virtio-SCSI Storage Controller devices.
When installed on Windows virtual disks, application-whitelisting
software, such as Cb Protection by Carbon Black, can cause the import
process to fail. You might need to uninstall such software prior to
import.
If you are importing a virtual disk running RHEL, bring your own
license (BYOL) is supported only if the python-boto package is
installed on the virtual disk prior to import.
Operating systems on virtual disks must support ACPI
If you decide to go this route I recommend you to look and use the compatibility precheck tool
Velostrata
Velostrata supports 4 different sources of machines.
On-premise VM
Azure
AWS
Physical server
The guide you share indicates that you need to download "Migrate for Compute Engine Connector ISO image" (included in the link), save it in an USB and make it bootable.
Then you will need to continue with the steps here
You can also use the path you suggest to do a P2V migration to VMware environment using a tool such as VMconverter
Once your machine is in a VMware environment follow the on-premise Velostrata migration guide
It is possible to copy image from a VMware ESXi 5.0 server to a vSphere 5.0 server.
Is there any compatibility issues?
Thanks
not a problem. i would use esxi File->Export->Export OVF Template. then you can deploy the exported ovf template into vsphere5 vcenter. I am assuming by vSphere 5.0 server you mean vcenter, as opposed to standalone hypervisor esxi5.0.
you could also just copy files with file system commands (with the vm shut down) from one place to another, but ovf is more robust and general more optimized.
if your vcenter still have extra license, you can also add the esxi5.0 host to the vcenter temporarily (if the host is reachable from the vcenter) and you can then just clone the vm.
I think you can choose host you want to up image. After you choose configuration/storage. Click right storage --> Browse Datastore, you can export/import image.
I am searching for a way to consolidate the VM chain for a VMWare 4.0 library Configuration programmatically -
and I wonder why clonÃng to workspace via API and deleting of the clone do not decrease the chain.
We have on basic library configuration and by cloning and deploying it to the workspace for IT-Tests the chain length grows. I thought of deleting the clone will decrease the chain, but it does not.
So has anyone found out how to consolidate the VM chain via API? Yes, it works when using the web interface.
Thanks and regards,
Marco
You need to use MachineConsolidate from the Internal API.
https://your.labmanager.server.com/LabManager/SOAP/LabManagerInternal.asmx?op=MachineConsolidate
VMWare doesn't officially support the internal API which is why you might not have seen it. More information can be found here:
http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-10608