Detach, move and attach disk to another VM...

[ikt]

Hi,

We have a domain controller which also is partly a windows file server.  One of its disks contains the fileserver data files.  I want to detach this disk, move it to another folder in the SAN and attach it to another server in the same domain.

I assume that this operation would be the same as moving a physical disk, so I won't get any problems with lost windows files / folders' NTFS permissions when attaching it to another server in the same domain?

/tor

[JimKnopf99]

Hi,

read this.

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/301242

Frank

[aravinds3107]

Moving and attaching the VMDK to a different VM will not impact and data inside the guest OS. After attaching the disk to the new VM you may want to adjust any DNS entries related to fileshare which were pointing to the old VM name to the new VM name.

You could use Storage vMotion to move the VMDk to the new location and remove the old VM and add to new VM. Make sure you do not have any exisitng snapshot on the disk before moving/removing the VMDK from old VM

[ikt]

Thanks to both for affirmative answers.  Unfortunately I only have the Essentials Plus license which doesn't include Storage vMotion, but I have no problems using the Move and then Rename commands in Datastore Browser.

/tor

[gautam_johar]

Hi, Please check this solution here https://www.vcnotes.in/2021/09/move-multiple-disks-from-one-vm-to.html

Only thing you need to add here is the move operation with move-vm. Hope that is doable for you else you can comment on post. I will help you out.

[continuum]

"Back in the days when I still thought I could safely detach.move and reattach vmdks to other VMs ....."

This story will soon end like that, you will tell about it during nights at the campfire ....
While  this in theory makes sense  and sounds reasonable I highly warn you to do the moving part !!!!
When  you really think you need to do such hi-risk-operations at least keep the files where  they are  - the moveing part is the one that will go wrong with super ugly results - dont move files without need !!!!!!!!

Ulli