Automating vMotion without clustering

[mattstewartcsd]

Is it possible to automate vMotion moves without implementing clustering? When I patch a host I don't want to have to power off every VM, and I don't want to have to manually vMotion everything to another host. Can this be done without HA?

[AndreTheGiant]

VMotion can also work without a VMware cluster, but it required a shared storage (and other things)

Note that HA and VMotion are different license and different technologies.

If you have VMotion enabled, you can simple put a host in maintenance mode and VMotion will free it without power-off the VMs.

And if you have VUM it can make all in an automatic way.

Andre

[mattstewartcsd]

Yes, the storage is shared. How do I automate a move? For example - Move all VM's from HOST A to HOST B as soon as HOST A goes into maintenance mode? The licence I have is vSphere Enterprise Plus.

[AndreTheGiant]

As I write before you need VMotion license to do it from the client and without power-off the VM.

With your license, you can create only use a cold migration.

To automate the power-off and, migrate, power-on you can try to use some PowerShell or other scripts.

Andre

[weinstein5]

to automate the move you will need DRS in automatic mode - so you will need DRS licenses and vMotion licenses -

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

[Linjo]

Another solution would be to make a powershell-script that does the vMotion for you.

First you need to find out what VM:s are running and then feed that into a vMotion loop.

Best regards,

Linjo

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[mattstewartcsd]

Do hosts need to be clustered to use DRS?

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

Yes DRS requires clustering

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 20, 2010, at 8:30 AM, "mattstewartcsd" <communities-emailer@vmware.com