{"id":1499,"date":"2015-07-17T13:31:41","date_gmt":"2015-07-17T12:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emtunc.org\/blog\/?p=1499"},"modified":"2015-07-17T13:31:41","modified_gmt":"2015-07-17T12:31:41","slug":"converting-iscsi-targets-in-windows-to-vmdk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emtunc.org\/blog\/07\/2015\/converting-iscsi-targets-in-windows-to-vmdk\/","title":{"rendered":"Converting iSCSI Targets in Windows to VMDK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently I was tasked with converting iSCSI connected disks on Windows Servers to a new SAN. With this migration it was decided that we should convert the disks to native ESXi VMDK format.<\/p>\n

It is not possible to storage-vMotion the iSCSI disks without doing some work first (see below) as the hypervisor does not see the iSCSI disks as they are essentially remote<\/em> disks.
\nIn this article are some ideas you could potentially use to convert the iSCSI disks to VMDK.<\/p>\n

Option A: Some downtime – easy<\/h3>\n

You could use the VMware vCenter Converter tool to migrate the disks to VMDK. This will involve some down time.<\/p>\n

Option B: No down time necessary\u00a0– requires some work<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

Another option which you could potentially do without any down time is to:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Attach a new HDD to the VM with the same size (or bigger) as the iSCSI disk<\/li>\n
  • In disk management (diskmgmt.msc), right click the iSCSI volume and select mirror. Select the new HDD we just attached to the VM<\/li>\n
  • Wait for the volumes to mirror – no down time required during the mirroring process. Depending on the volume size, the mirroring process could take a while.<\/li>\n
  • When the mirroring process is complete, right click the iSCSI disk and select\u00a0Remove Mirror.\u00a0<\/em>Select the iSSCI disk in the next window and confirm that you want to remove the mirror.<\/li>\n
  • All your data that was previously on the iSCSI disk is now on the VMDK. You can safely disconnect the iSCSI volume.<\/li>\n
  • Use vMotion to move the disks to a new server\/storage appliance<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Recently I was tasked with converting iSCSI connected disks on Windows Servers to a new SAN. With this migration it was decided that we should convert the disks to native ESXi VMDK format. It is not possible to storage-vMotion the iSCSI disks without doing some work first (see below) as the hypervisor does not see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[68,189,190],"class_list":["post-1499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-esxi","tag-iscsi-conversion","tag-vmdk"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1trTO-ob","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emtunc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emtunc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emtunc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emtunc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emtunc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emtunc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1500,"href":"https:\/\/emtunc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions\/1500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emtunc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emtunc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emtunc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}