Non-disruptive VM datastore migration

[CarlosFernande1]

Hi all,

I have a vCenter with several hundred VMs. They are stored in 4 different NFS datastores. Is there any way to non-disruptively move them (1 after the other, and 1 at a time) from their current datastore to the newly created one by command-line?

Thank you.

[vmroyale]

Hello and welcome to the communities.

Note: Discussion successfully moved from VMware Storage to Automation Tools

[CarlosFernande1]

Thank you very much.

I have been a user for some years already, but not very active no be honest... I will try change that

[mofr]

if i understood you correctly you need to move existing VMs from current NFS datastore to another NFS datastore without VMs downtime. if so you can do it using Storage vMotion and change VMs datastores as you want.

VMware vSphere 5.1

[CarlosFernande1]

Hi mofr.

Thank you for your answer. However, if I do it this way, taking under consideration that we are taking about hundreds of VMs and that I have to do it one at a time, and also that this is a manual solution since you have to click on migrate and select the new datasotre... imagine. It is a tedious and time consuming task. I am actually looking for a command line solution so I can actually script it and send the commands to the ESXi hosts or vCenter to make it an automatic task.

I hope to have explained better the situation and the solution I am looking for.

Thank you very much.

[mofr]

PowerCLI will help to achive your goal. http://www.virtu-al.net/2011/09/14/quick-and-simple-storage-vmotion-scripts/

also u can limit number of simultaneous svmotion http://niktips.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/limiting-the-number-of-concurrent-storage-vmotions/

[CarlosFernande1]

Hi mofr,

this is actually very helpful. I am not skilled on PowerCLI but I will give it a try. Thank you very much.

[CarlosFernande1 · Accepted solution]

Hi mofr,

thanks to your tip, I did some extra search and found the solution to my problem. In order to limit vCenter to do one (and just one) live datastore migration at a time you should configure vpxd.cfg in your vCenter machine and add the following under <vpxd></vpxd>:

<ResourceManager>

      <maxCostPerDatastore>2</maxCostPerDatastore>

      <maxCostPerEsx41Ds>16</maxCostPerEsx41Ds>

      <maxCostPerHost>4</maxCostPerHost>

</ResourceManager>

I hope this helps others as well.

Thank you again.

[vMariaL]

CarlosFernandezSanMillan wrote:

Hi all,

I have a vCenter with several hundred VMs. They are stored in 4 different NFS datastores. Is there any way to non-disruptively move them (1 after the other, and 1 at a time) from their current datastore to the newly created one by command-line?

Thank you.

Quick Migration might be another option. It's a feature of Veeam Backup Free Edition. You can find more info about it here: http://www.veeam.com/virtual-machine-backup-solution-free.html#migration

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Veeam Community Manager