[AusNOG] Re Question about ESXI and importing data from a HDD

[Giles Pollock]

There is actually quite a few ways to do this, one way I've used in the
past is just getting a linux livecd to boot the VM then using DD to move
the disk image to the VMDK belonging to the VM. I believe VMWare converter
might also work, although it has been some time since I've had to do this.

Another option is to use VMWare workstation which from last check can use a
raw disk image instead of a vmdk, however this is rather inefficient on
disk space usage.

Personally I'd use the livecd approach, depending on your infrastructure
setup and access, you might be able to load the disk image into a suitable
repository, or if its a physical disk and access to the ESXi infrastructure
is a no-go, use netcat, zcat and dd to push the image across a network into
the VM itself.

Drivers shouldn't be too much of an issue, just get and install VMWare
tools once the image is transferred across and booting properly (dd the
entire disk, not just the partitions, that way you get the boot sector and
most of the time everything magically works!).

Giles


On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 12:16 AM, Peter Blackford <peter at onemetric.com>wrote:

> winimage can create a vmdk from a hard drive.
>
>
> On 14 August 2013 00:13, Samantha Scafe <samantha at smellyblackdog.com.au>wrote:
>
>> Guys****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Got a linux HDD from an installation that is required again.  As we now
>> have esxi infrastructure how does one make an esxi image from a HDD
>> I don’t know of any other then to power it up and use a convertor to
>> import it, but before I go to that trouble is there any other way?****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Sam****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
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