Uninstalling ESX 4.0

Question

I have an ESX 4.0 server which needs to be uninstalled. Does this basically equate to a format of the HD on the physical server? I have not found any command to do an uninstall or a repair (though I did see a repair is possible).

Questions:

1. Is an uninstall a format?
2. Where is the repair command?
3. If I have no partitions on the physical HD, so ESX and the VMs are installed on an unpartitioned HD, can I keep the VMs (the entire datastore) and somehow uninstall ESX completely?

Thanks

Answer 1

1. Yes
2. Repair? What do you mean by this? Are you talking about something like a windows Repair install?
3. You could theoretcially just blow away the ext partitions manually and not the vmfs (type ... 88 or 89 if i remember corectly). Although really the best way would be to get them off via some sort of backup, or just a plan scp through the service console.