Add a New Virtual Machine to Inventory from a Datastore

 

 

By Joe Piggee

If you present new storage to vSphere that already has VM’s stored on it, you can add them to inventory so you can power them on, manage them etc by following these steps.

1. Open the vSphere/VMware Infrastructure (VI) Client and log in with appropriate credentials.
2. If connecting to vCenter Server, click on the desired host.
3. Click the Configuration tab.
4. Click Storage.
5. Right-click on the appropriate datastore and click Browse Datastore.
6. Navigate to the folder named after the virtual machine, and locate the <virtual machine>.vmx file.
7. Right-click the .vmx file and click Add to inventory. The Add to Inventory wizard opens.
   continue to follow the wizard to add the virtual machine.

If the device is something like an external USB drive, prior to completing the steps above complete the following:

If you have some shared storage, install vCenter 5.1, then connect the External hard drive to the PC you are working from(the one you have the vSphere client installed on) browse to the appropriate datastore, and upload the VM's to the shared storage, or to the local datastore that the ESXi host has. Then complete the steps needed to import the discovered VM's listed above.

What Files Make up a virtual Machine on ESXi 5.x

By Joe Piggee Sr.

 

Ok, I have received this question 4 times this week, via email, so decided to just put up a quick FAQ. “What files make up a VM, on ESXi 5?” Below you see a screenshot one of my virtual machines, which just happens to be also be my vCenter.

 

Quick Note: Virtual machines lock the .vswp, -flat.vmdk and -delta.vmdk, .vmx and .log files while powered on.

 

File	Description
*.vmx	This is the configuration file for the VM.
*.vmxf	This is also a configuration file, but not really used. It’s main purpose is for compatibility. If you were to move a VM from ESXi to a VMWare Workstation installation, this file would be used.
*.vmsd	This is just a snapshot descriptor file, that stores metadata. As you see above, mine is 0KB, because I have not created any snapshots.
*.vmdk	This is the VM’s hard disk descriptor. This contains all the VM HD’s settings. Like how large etc..
-flat.vmdk	This is the actual VM HD that contains the data.
*.log	VM Log Files, there maybe additional log file with vmname-(Number) that contain old versions of the logs
*.nvram	VM System Bios data
*.vswp	VM Swap File reated when the virtual machine boots and is used to swap memory if access to physical memory isn’t possible. Especially useful when ballooning.
*.lck	This is the file that has locked your running files. A running virtual machine creates lock files to prevent consistency problems on virtual disks. If the virtual machine did not use locks, multiple virtual machines might read and write to the disk, causing data corruption. Lock files are always created in the same directory as the .vmdk files