Question Proliant ML110 G6 Servers\

[Baldur2630]

I have 3 standalone Proliant ML110 G6 Servers. All run VMWare 6 only two are in use, the third is a spare.

I have a 1.5 TB Hard Drive with a Windows 2012 server and a Novell 6.5 Netware server both VM's
I just bought a new 4TB Hard drive and I want to replace the 1,5 TB drive with the 4TB one.
We aren't running a NAS so I can't use Vmotion.
I have Veeam Backups of the servers.
There are 3 possibilities :
(a) I put in the new drive and restore the backups
(b) I take one of the other hard drives out of the server, put in the new drive, copy the VMWare servers, Take out the old 1.5 and then replace the drive I took out
(c) Prefer - Plug in the spare server, Prepare the 4TB drive in the spare server, bring down the two machines I want to transfer and just move them with VMWare. When the move is complete I take the new 4TB hard drive from the spare server and pop it into the bat where the 1,5 TB drice was..

The question is. If I use method (c) will there be a problem because the 4TB drive was setup in a different ML110 G6 (the only difference is the CPU)?

 

[uguv]

Is esxi installed on the 1.5tb drive or is there a different boot disk? Method c shouldn't cause a problem, especially if it doesn't contain the hypervisor OS.

You say you have 2 servers in use. can both VMs fit on one host? if so, vmotion everything to server 2, then swap the drive on server 1 and vmotion them back.

 

[Baldur2630]

All three servers are running the same fully licensed ESX. Each server has the hypervisor OS running on the small HD that comes with the Proliant. There are no VM's on this HD. Each server has 16GB RAM. I would like to upgrade to 32GB but as far as I am aware, it's very hit and miss.

Its by far the most convenient for me to use methed (c) as long as the actual Hard Drives are interchangeable. The only difference between the three is that the working server have Xeon CPUs and the Spare a minimum spec CPU. I just don't want to finish copying only to find when I swap the 1.5TB for the 4TB that the server doesn't recognize it or the virtual servers won't boot! My fallback would be just to put the 1,5 back again. There's nothing wrong with it, just not enough space.