I am fairly new to VMware, so when I set up my first server, I put all storage into a single datastore (all 3.6 TB). Thinking it wasn't a big deal, I created three VMs, a VPN server, domain controller and file server. I had been doing file-level backups to tape and now want to switch to snapshots. Unfortunately I found out the hard way that VMware has a 2 GB limitation on the datastore for its snapshot mechanism. Now I'm stuck trying to move all the servers off, reconfigure the datastore into two and copy the servers back on. My questions are:
Is this even possible? I can take a snapshot of the DC and VPN servers easily and it seems possible to move them over to a NAS I have while I reconfigure the datastores. Where I am getting confused is how do I get a snapshot of the 3 TB file server, put it on the NAS and then move it back to two datastores? Am I overthinking this and VMware will take care of it all or is this a valid concern and not really possible?
I am using ESXi 5.0 and do not have another VM onsite to use. I do have a 12 TB NAS at my disposal though. Could I mount the NAS as a few datastores, move over the VM to that, reconfigure the main datastore and then move it back?
Thanks for any recommendations.
Matthew
