Bring ESXi vm into VMworkstation?

W

wildbill001

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 2, 2012
Messages
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The company has gotten VMworkstation v9.02 for my laptop. I have a couple of VMs on my home ESXi5.1 system that I would like to bring onto my laptop. Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see a command or menu option to "export".

Can I do this and if so what is the best way?

as always, TIA

Bill W
 
Kewl. I'll give that a shot.

Of course, it dawns on me that I could just create a new VM in workstation and not worry about moving from ESXi......

Bill W
 
You should just be able to copy the .vmdk and .vmx to the machine with Workstation and import it
 
Workstation and ESXi are integrated.

The Workstation can connect into ESXi and can:
- start/stop a machine
- run a remote desktop (against an ESXi guest)
- An ESXi hosted guest cannot run dual screens from Workstation v8
- A Workstation hosted guest can run both 2x and 3x screens (doing this now with Win7 guest on CentOS 6.4 host). In other words, I have a CentOS host with VMWorkstation. And I can run a Win7 guest with a 3 screen display (Win7 being a Workstation guest). I'm using a FirePro GPU with AMD provided Linux drivers.
- Workstation VMs can also be uploaded" to ESXi. But, I haven't found a menu option to download an ESXi guest into a connected Workstation host. I read on this forum that you can simply copy the necessary files, and as long as all the drivers lined up, could simply start the ESXi guest within its new Workstation home... haven't tried this yet.

For guest console/desktop activities... the Workstation VM console provides a superior UI for ESXi VMs. I tend to start ESXi with vSphere Client and then use Workstation for everything else.
 
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file -> Export as OVF template in VI client. Copy to workstation. Import. Done :)

Workstation can also talk to the server directly as above, if it has access to the machine, OVF is the portable format though.
 
Well, this is weird. :eek:

I knew about the "Export OVF template" command but when I to use it several days ago, it was grayed out--unselectable. I just figured that was because of my using the free version of ESXi.

So today, I tried it again. I CAN select it now. :confused:

I did reboot my host a couple of hours ago, so maybe that had something to do with it. I dunno. Computers are sometimes such a mystery to me.

Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions. Now, go get yourself a cup of coffee, tea, softdrink and/or adult-beverage. You've earned it my friends.

Bill W
 
wildbill001 said:
Well, this is weird. :eek:

I knew about the "Export OVF template" command but when I to use it several days ago, it was grayed out--unselectable. I just figured that was because of my using the free version of ESXi.

So today, I tried it again. I CAN select it now. :confused:

I did reboot my host a couple of hours ago, so maybe that had something to do with it. I dunno. Computers are sometimes such a mystery to me.

Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions. Now, go get yourself a cup of coffee, tea, softdrink and/or adult-beverage. You've earned it my friends.

Bill W
Click to expand...

Have to have the VM selected, that's a context specific menu. If you have, say, a host highlighted, it'll only have log exports available :)
 
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