Posted in so you spent days perfecting a virtual machine in workstation and saved the vmdk file somewhere for future use and then the time comes to pull it out to find that your esx server does not even see it. You cant use the converter or the importer because it is looking for a config file (vmx) which you dont have… now what. well its pretty simple actually.
Transfer the vmdk file to your esx server than open up a remote CLI… I prefer putty but thats up to you. Browse to where the file is and issue the following command:
vmkfstools -i /”path”/”filename”.vmdk new-”filename”.vmdk
(fill in the path and filenames)
This clones/converts the original vmdk file into the appropriate format for your esx server. Know just create a virtual machine and add an existing hard drive point to your NEW cloned vmdk file.
One think to watch out for is the new file will be larger in size so make sure you have plenty of disk space for this process.
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Hi,
I am creating a disk with “thick” option. So I tried to run vmkfstool and i get “not found” return. I am logged in as root user so I should have all the privileges. Am I missing something?
Are you only creating a new “disk”? I use the above method to convert/clone a vmdk file from workstion v6 to be compatible for esx 3.5 because all I had was the “disk” (vmdk) and not the config (vmx) which is needed to use the converter for ESX. If you give more detail I can maybe provide a better answer.