I recently decided that it is time to setup a new homelab. The old server is about 10 yrs old. The hardware does not allow any upgrade in CPU and Ram. VMWare ESXi was version 6.5, but I could not upgrade to version 6.7 because the network card was not in the list of supported NICs and so the upgrade failed. Last, but not least, the power consumption was at 200W.

The new HomeLab has the following components

• Intel NUC NUC7i7DNHE BGA 1356 1.9GHz i7-8650U UCFF
• Crucial CT16G4SFD824A 16GB (DDR4, 2400 MT/s, PC4-19200, DRx8, SODIMM, 260-Pin) (2x)
• Samsung MZ-V7E500BW 970 EVO SSD, 500GB NVMe M.
• Seagate ST2000LM015 Barracuda 2 TB disk (6,4 cm (2,5 Zoll) 128 MB Cache, Sata 6 Gb/s
• SanDisk Ultra Fit 64 GB FlashDrive USB 3.1 bis zu 130MB/Sec

It took less than 30 minutes to assemble the NUC and install VMWare ESXi 6.7. ( + 15 minutes to drive to the local hardware store to grab an USB keyboard once I realized that I would need one for the setup )

Today, I migrated the existing VMs from the old host to the new one.

ESXi does not include VMotion. VMotion costs a lot of money.
I had read some articles which claimed to be best practice. But to be honest, using Veeam or SCP are not, what I consider “best” practice. I tried SCP, but it was so slooooow. Even a 50GB VM was estimated 11 hours to copy. And I have 30 VMs from just a couple of MB to 100GB.

I searched for a better solution. And I finally found it. VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Client.

You simply choose the “source” ESXi instance and select the VM to copy. Next you select the “target” ESXi. You can also choose, if the copy will be automatically updated to the target VM version.

It took only 30 minutes to copy a 50GB VM. Another 100GB VM was copied in 20 minutes.

The whole migration was done in only 5 hours. Not bad, isn’t it.