>If you want to migrate a VM to a different host box using the free ESXI, you really need to have Network Attached Storage.
>You cannot easily copy files (or VMs) directly to a new host.
>
>You can use scp to migrate without Network Attached Storage, but the speed is abysmal - crippled apparently by design.
>Abysmal = several days offline to copy a large vm to a different host on the local network.
>
>I used FreeNAS for Network Attached Storage, and I found the learning curve steeper than expected.
>On the plus side, it works great on old hardware.
>
>Initially I thought the fancy features of the paid version would not be missed.
>I was wrong.
>Having a large VM offline for hours and hours while cloning/backing-up and all the manual work required has been quite a time suck.
>
>I am seriously looking at XenServer just to get the live migration/backup without going offline.

thx for the info - something that was totally off radar for me. We use 2 servers with Hyper-V and I know that our admin regularly pulls a backup of the VM directories (somewhere between 1 and to dozen VM) plus incremental DB backup to external disc to put into bank vault - and I also know that a test run to deploy to other machines was done without trouble in less than a half day.