How to access the contents of VMDK file in the ESXi host?

Nikita Kipriyanov

11/3/23, 5:07 AM

We have a number of computers based on the old HP ProLiant Gen1 blades, and we are going to get rid of that. It is impossible to reinstall the software which is licensed and support requirement are quite tough, we decided to virtualize is's system as is. We know that software will still work; it's Oracle based, and in particular we support the life of this system by moving hard disks into another similar blade when this one dies; this was done already several times, but it can't be like that forever. The problem is that we are going to use VMWare, but the OS is i686, so the VMWare's own converter is impossible to use.

The way to go is to make a VM and clone a hard disk into its virtual disk. While it is not a problem to boot the original computer and VM from the Live CD and simply send a dd stream through SSH, and write it to the disk in the VM, I wonder if that could be done in a more efficient way.

In Linux, I can write the vmdk file without running a VM in the following way:

qemu-img create -f vmdk hdd.vmdk
modprobe nbd
qemu-nbd -c /dev/nbd0 hdd.vmdk

Now, I simply dump stream onto this /dev/nbd0 device and it happens inside hdd.vmdk file. Then I can disconnect it from nbd and attach to a virtual machine.

It is possible to do the same in the ESXi host (not in the VM)? I can create a virtual hard disk image using vmkfstools and there are ssh and dd in the host, the only missing part is this nbd stuff, or whatever could replace it.

298

2 + 0

linux

cloning

vmware-esxi

Score:0

Server

Gerald Schneider

11/3/23, 5:49 AM

Use the VMware converter. It's the official tool to convert physical machines to VMs.

+ 3

Nikita Kipriyanov

11/3/23, 7:24 AM

*but the OS is i686, so the VMWare's own converter is impossible to use*. We tried. The requirement to leave OS as is restricts this possibility.

Gerald Schneider

11/3/23, 7:25 AM

Why should it? I've used it on i686 before.

Nikita Kipriyanov

11/3/23, 7:43 AM

I'm sorry, I did not investigated the exact cause of the issue, in any case, the converter did not worked on those machines, and we are very afraid to break the quite fragile application software running, so it is disallowed to install/update libraries and so on. It is very bad, but the business depends on it and the SW vendor even banned some minor Oracle patches (which should normally be installed), so basically it's "it did not run — do not use it, the attempt to repair is forbidden".

Score:0

Server

appl3r

11/3/23, 8:01 AM

I would not write the VMDK directly. You can just boot into the VM and run whatever you want.

Clone the OS with a disk cloning tool of your choice (simple dd, acronis, Macrium Reflect).
Create the VM on the new VMWare host
Boot the VM with a live cd / acronis boot cd ...etc
Restore the OS

+ 2

Nikita Kipriyanov

11/3/23, 8:09 AM

I know this solution, I wanted to improve it.

appl3r

11/3/23, 8:20 AM

Much easier and problem-free.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: How to access the contents of VMDK file in the ESXi host?

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