Migrate from one ESXI 6.5 host to another

[jweldon]

We just got a bigger server with more storage. Trying to make the migration of our existing Freenas (which is a VM in source ESXI host) to new ESXI host as seemless as possible.

Need advice. I know on a basic level I can just spin up a new FreeNas VM in host and migrate the data, but would love to be able to just be able to "move" the VM and its storage to new host. Possible?

 

[ChrisRJ]

With this amount of information nobody is able to provide any help.

 

[socra]

@jweldon depends on how you've set up your VM. Does the VM host the storage on VMFS or are you passing through the disks to the VM?

 

[jweldon]

@jweldon depends on how you've set up your VM. Does the VM host the storage on VMFS or are you passing through the disks to the VM?

On the current host the the VM is using 80 percent of the datastore storage as its drive or Pool. I'd like to explore VMFS but don't know enough about it.

 

[socra]

I agree with @ChrisRJ that without providing more info it's difficult to offer help

 

[HoneyBadger]

It looks as if you're presenting a VMware virtual disk to FreeNAS. This isn't the preferred method.

Have a read through the blogpost "Yes, you can virtualize FreeNAS" - while it's old, it's still accurate in the statements regarding the use of PCIe passthrough for production environments.

Yes, You Can (Still) Virtualize TrueNAS

TrueNAS is a powerful storage virtualization software solution that helps businesses virtualize data. Get started today with TrueNAS.

www.truenas.com

If you provide some greater detail about the VMware hardware that you're using, we can recommend a path forward to a supported or "production-ready" configuration - but you'll likely need to purchase an additional HBA for your storage drives.

As a side note - ESXi 6.x is a bit "past its sell-by date" - is your hardware capable of and supported for an upgrade to 7.0?