VMware Cloud Community
jmcomas
Contributor
Contributor

Migrating from local to cluster ESX

We've got 2 ESX Servers 3.5 with local VMs on each one, now we want to connect both to a SAN, and implement a cluster, how can we plan it, is it possible to move directly the hosts to a cluster, and then move the VMs to the new SAN datastore, or maybe is it necessary to backup the VMs first and then restore to the new SAN Datastore? Any technical document regarding it?

Best,

K

Reply
0 Kudos
5 Replies
VMKR9
Expert
Expert

its very simple to migrate a vm from local to SAN, just create a vmfs on your new san and you can power of the vms and just right click and migrate and select the new datastore, this is a cold migration, you could also look at doing a SVmotion with running vms....

Reply
0 Kudos
VMKR9
Expert
Expert

Heres a link to a plugin for svmotion...

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/122847

Reply
0 Kudos
jmcomas
Contributor
Contributor

We can assume powering off the machines,

Moving a host to a cluster is possible, and it keeps all VMs, being possible to create a new Resource Pool, etc... , but we want to know if it's the same moving VMs to SAN after or before adding the host to a cluster? What's the recommendation?

Best,

K

Reply
0 Kudos
VMKR9
Expert
Expert

I would probably move the vms before adding the host to the cluster just to be sure, but you can have vms that are not in the cluster with their vmdks on local storage even if the host is in a DRS/HA cluster

Reply
0 Kudos
jmcomas
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for your suggestions,

K

Reply
0 Kudos