Installation guide

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VMware ESX Server Administration Guide
First you need to import the virtual disks and any redo logs to the server and create a
new virtual machine configuration. See Importing a GSX Server or Workstation Virtual
Machine on page 70.
On the VMFS partition where you store your virtual machines, make sure you have
enough space to hold the full capacity of the source virtual disk. A virtual disk created
in ESX Server has its full capacity allocated at the time the virtual disk file is created; for
a 2GB virtual disk, the virtual disk file is 2GB in size at the time the disk is created.
In VMware Workstation and GSX Server, the virtual disk file usually starts smaller and
grows to the maximum capacity as data is added. Thus, you can create a 2GB virtual
disk, install the guest operating system and the virtual disk may be contained in a
500MB file. However, when you migrate the virtual disk to ESX Server, the import
process converts the disk for ESX Server and the disk occupies 2GB of space on the
partition.
Caution: If you created a virtual disk that is contained in a single .vmdk file larger
than 2GB (the default for Workstation 4 virtual disks) and want to migrate the virtual
disk to ESX Server, you must FTP or copy the disk from the Workstation host to the ESX
Server machine. Once the file has been copied to the service console, you must use
vmkfstools to import the disk into ESX Server. For the syntax on how to import the
disk, see Examples Using vmkfstools on page 238.
If the virtual disk has a redo log (GSX Server 2.5 or Workstation 3.2 or earlier virtual
machines) or a snapshot (Workstation 4 virtual machines) associated with it, you can
choose to do either of the following:
• If you want the most current representation of the virtual disk before you import
it, commit the changes in the redo log or take a snapshot just before importing.
• If you want to use the base disk, discard the changes in the redo log or migrate
the virtual machine without the snapshot (.vmss) file.
When you install VMware Tools in the VMware ESX Server virtual machine, you may set
up a new network driver.
Virtual machines migrated from Workstation and GSX Server cannot be configured to
use more than one virtual processor.