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angelvm
Contributor
Contributor

Hot Migration in Environments Without Shared Storage

Hi can someone help me? I have an environment with vcenter 5.5 and esx 5.5. I have implemented another totally new environment with vcsa 6.7 and host 6.7 with vsan. I need to move the machines to the vsan storage, and inventory them in the new vcenter 6.7. Both environments do not have shared storage. There is some way to migrate hot machines. Converter? Veeam Backup? thank you

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Beingnsxpaddy
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Dear angelvm​,

You are right about using VMware converter, however that wouldn't be hot migration, it would require cut over where you will shutdown the VM at the source (5.5 infra) and power on the VM at the destination (6.7 infra).

hot migration isnt possible from 5.5 to 6.7 as you cant manage 5.5 hosts with 6.7 vCenter, however what you can do for hot migration is to upgrade 5.5 VC to 6.0 and ESXi to 6.0, move the ESXi to vCenter 6.7 add the hosts to the same cluster and migrate running VM to vSAN ds and 6.7 host.

Regards Pradhuman VCIX-NV, VCAP-NV, vExpert, VCP2X-DCVNV If my Answer resolved your query don't forget to mark it as "Correct Answer".
IRIX201110141
Champion
Champion

If you can upgrade your 5.5 Hosts to 6.0 or higher the host goes automaticly into Evalmode which means Enterprise Plus. If you already have vSphere Standard than this doesnt matter. 

Add the upgraded Hosts to the new VCSA and you can perform an enhanced svMotion with the help of the Webclient/HTML5 (This was never an option in the old C# vSphere Client).

There is a high chance that you dont even have to select a EVC Mode as long as you havent apply patches on your old hosts against spectre and meltdown, because your new Intel Servers have the same and more CPU features as the old ones. Only if the new Hosts have less features you need EVC, or if you try to migrate the VMs back to the old Hosts.

Converter or Veeam NEVER over Hot migration. Veeam have something like an orchestrated VM Replication, Shutdown, Replicate the last changes, Powered it On again feature.

Regards,

Joerg

sjesse
Leadership
Leadership

This is the steps I did, we also moved to a distrivuted switch at the time, that part could be skipped

  1. 1.)Remove a host from the current 5.5 cluster
  2. 2.)Migrate VMs you want to move to the new environment to the isolated host
  3. 3.)Disconnect the host from the 5.5 vcenter
  4. 4.)Connect the host to the 6.5 vcenter
  5. 5.)Migrate the virtual machines to the distributed switch we setup
  6. 6.)Storage vmotion to the vmfs 6 datastores we have setup
  7. 7.)Vmotion the virtual to the 6.5 cluster
  8. 8.)Then reinstall this host as 6.5 and add it to the 6.5 cluster

The key part is once you get the 5.5 host connected to the 6.5 vcenter, cross vcenter vmotion should copy the workloads between datastores, if you have the correct license. This worked between 2 data centers about 60 miles apart for us and we only had 1 server out of 900ish have a problem.

MohamadAlhousse
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Why don't you setup a vSphere Replication Appliance on both end of vCenter servers and replicate your VMs from the old environment to the new one. Once replication is all done, At any time you can just shutdown the VMs at the old site and switch to the new one. This way you will also have  the old VMs in the old environment as a backup in case of any issue.

Please consider marking this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you think your question have been answered correctly. Cheers, @vExpertConsult www.vexpertconsultancy.com VCIX-DCV 2018 | VCIX-NV 2019 | VCAP7-CMA Design | vSAN Specialist | vExpert ** | vExpert NSX | vExpert vSAN
IRIX201110141
Champion
Champion

Because he ask for a live migration.

Regards,

Joerg

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MohamadAlhousse
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Yeah I see but in all cases there will be a need for hardware version and vmware tools upgrade for the VMs which will require a maintenance window schedule.

Please consider marking this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you think your question have been answered correctly. Cheers, @vExpertConsult www.vexpertconsultancy.com VCIX-DCV 2018 | VCIX-NV 2019 | VCAP7-CMA Design | vSAN Specialist | vExpert ** | vExpert NSX | vExpert vSAN
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Beingnsxpaddy
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

that can be covered with regul maintanence window.

Regards Pradhuman VCIX-NV, VCAP-NV, vExpert, VCP2X-DCVNV If my Answer resolved your query don't forget to mark it as "Correct Answer".
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