Transferring a Virtual Machine Between vSphere ESXi Hosts

If you need to quickly transfer a VM between two ESXi hosts and do not have (or want to install) tools such as Veeam Backup & Replication then your best friend is going to be OVF Tool from VMware.

Step 1 – Download & Install OVF Tool

You need to download the latest version of OVF Tool from https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/ovf/ – for this you will need to login with a VMware account.

Step 2 – Initiate Transfer

Execute the transfer by going to the installed directory and executing the below commands. I transferred a virtual machine between ESXi 6.0 and 5.5 hosts without any issues.

cd "C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool"

ovftool.exe --disableVerification --noSSLVerify --datastore="LABSAN1-DS01" --network="VLAN-PROD" vi:///W2012R2_TEMP vi://

1. Skips validation of signature and certificate
2. Specify the destination datastore
3. Specify the destination Virtual PortGroup
4. Specify the source ESXi host
5. Specify the destination ESXi host

If the correct attributes have been use, the output should look like this:

Enter login information for source vi://labesxi01.nokitel.im/
Username: root
Password: ****************
Opening VI source: vi://:443/W2012R2_TEMP
Enter login information for target vi://labesxi02.nokitel.im/
Username: root
Password: **************
Opening VI target: vi://:443/
Deploying to VI: vi://:443/

And when it has successfully finished you will see the following:

Transfer Completed
Completed successfully