I have VMWare xSphere Hypervisor 4.1 or VMWare ESXi 4.1 installed on a hard drive (sorry VMWare's naming and renaming is killing me, I am using the free hypervisor, I am just going to call it ESXi from here on out). This was a older installation that I have upgraded/patched to the latest and greatest.
The ESXi installation resides on the same disk as my main data storage. I would like to move all of this to a new drive. It appears the "industry" way is to backup the host profile, reinstall ESXi on the new drive and restore the host profile. The VM disks can then be copied over. However it appears host backups are only supported in the enterprise paid for versions.
How can I move all of my configuration and virtual machine information to the new drive with the free version?
Also, is it a bad practice to keep your main data storage on your ESXi installed drive? Is there a book or easy to read website which suggests best practices for the free ESXi?