Restore from replication job to a new ESX server

[shannonadams68]

I have two ESX servers, both with internal storage. I have a nightly job that replicates from my production ESX to a standby server. I plan to install a third ESX server soon and need to migrate a few VM's over to it from one of the existing two. What is the best way to do that using Veeam Backup?

Since I am doing a replication and not a backup, it looks like my only option is to "Restore from replica" in the Restore Wizard. If I choose restore from Backup/entire VM, there is no VM to choose from. When I choose "Restore from replica", it doesn't give me an option to choose a destination machine. So, I am confused regarding the option to use to move VM's to the new ESX server.

Thanks for any help.

[Gostev]

Shannon, you do not need Veeam Backup for this task.
It is best is to use VMware Storage VMotion instead.

[shannonadams68]

I forget to mention:

Primary server is running ESX Server 3i, 3.5.0, 123629 (free version)
Standby server is running ESX Server, 3.5.0, 123630 (VI3 Foundation Edition)

New server is not installed yet, but will be running the same version of ESX as the primary server (free version). I need to know the quickest way to move a VM off either the primary or standby server to this new one once it is up and running.

I cannot use VMware Storage VMotion with these versions can I?

[Gostev]

Shannon, in case of free version, no Storage VMotion is not available with free ESXi. In that case, the only solution would be to schedule downtime, shutdown required VMs and copy them over to new server with Veeam Backup (just copy/paste VM files in the Servers tree between hosts). Hope this helps.

[shannonadams68]

That is very helpful. Thanks. Would it be worth shutting down the VM I want to move, telnetting into primary server, gzipping the files, and then copying them to the new server. Then of course, unzipping them on the new server? Not sure of the compression rate, but it could save a lot of time, potentially if this is possible.

[Gostev]

Veeam Backup would do all this automatically for you if you had ESX on source side, but since you primary source is ESXi with no service console, it is simply impossible to do.

And I would not recommend enabling ESXi service console through known hack for your manual compression plan, you can actually create more downtime by doing this... running CPU and RAM heavy apps in ESXi "console" often causes management agent freezes/crashes (I've seen it reported on a few occurences by other users).