Using PowerCLI and ovftool to move VMs between vCenters

In this post I’ll show how to use PowerCLI and ovftool to move a VM between two vCenter servers. You can use multiple methods to export a VM from vCenter to a temporary location and then import it into a vCenter from said location, but with this method there is no temporary location used.The network traffic used to transfer the VM goes through the client where the script is ran so you probably want to run it from a location that makes sense. The traffic will go from Source vCenter > where the script is ran > Destination vCenter.The script below is just a listing of commands, you’ll probably want to wrap some of it in functions and add some error handling.

# Configuration
$ovftool = "ovftool.exe"  # If the ovftool.exe is not in your path, you need to specify the full path here.
$sourceVM = 'ovftest'
$sourceVIServer = 'vCenter1.vmware.local'
$targetVIServer = 'vCenter2.vmware.local'
$targetDatacenter = 'Super Datacenter'
$sourceNetwork = 'VM Network'  # This is the portgroup that the VM is currently on.
$targetNetwork = 'VLAN188'  # This is the portgroup that you want the VM placed onto.
$targetCluster = 'Super Cluster'
$targetDatastore = 'VM_Template_Transfer'

# Connect to the source and destination vCenters.
Connect-VIServer $sourceVIServer
Connect-VIServer $targetVIServer

# Assign the vCenters in a lookup table to make things easy to access.
$VIServers = @{
  $DefaultVIServers[0].name = $DefaultVIServers[0];
  $DefaultVIServers[1].name = $DefaultVIServers[1]
}

# Get the moref of the source VM
$sourceVMMoref = (get-vm $sourceVM -Server $VIServers[$sourceVIServer]).extensiondata.moref.value

# Get a session ticket for the source and destination vCenter servers.  This is what allows us to specify a vCenter server as the source and destination with the ovftool.
echo "sourceVIServer = $($VIServers.$sourceVIServer)"
$sourceSession = Get-View -server $VIServers.$sourceVIServer -Id sessionmanager
$sourceTicket = $sourceSession .AcquireCloneTicket()

echo "targetVIServer = $($VIServers.$targetVIServer)"
$targetSession = Get-View -server $VIServers.$targetVIServer -Id sessionmanager
$targetTicket = $targetSession .AcquireCloneTicket()

# Build the parameters that will be used with the ovftool.
$sourceTicket = "--I:sourceSessionTicket=$($sourceTicket)"
$targetTicket = "--I:targetSessionTicket=$($targetTicket)"
$datastore = "--datastore=$($targetDatastore)"
$network = "--net:$($sourceNetwork)=$($targetNetwork)"
$source = "vi://$($sourceVIServer)?moref=vim.VirtualMachine:$($sourceVMMoref)"
$destination = "vi://$($targetVIServer)/$($targetDatacenter)/host/$($targetCluster)/"

# Display the command that will be ran.
echo $datastore $network $sourceTicket $targetTicket $source $destination

# Use PowerCLI to run the ovftool.  PowerCLI makes it easy to run commands with multiple parameters.  Sometimes this can be tricky to do with Windows.
& $ovftool $datastore $network $sourceTicket $targetTicket $source $destination