Hello, is there anybody who has migrated very large disks from one storage unit to another? I have a VM with a secondary vmdk lazythick disk and I need to move this disk from a 3par storage unit to a different datastore on another 3par unit. The size of the disk is 8 TB. The bigger disk I moved so far is 2 TB and it took 2.5 hrs without issues. ESXi 6.5 U3 has 2600 Series 16Gb Fibre Channel to PCI Express HBAs. I'm afraid to do it simply because I never moved such a large disk before.
Also, I cannot shut down the VM, no chance.
There's basically no need to worry with storage migration. The original virtual disk will only be removed after a successful migration to the new storage/LUN. Just make sure that there's no task that tries to take a VM snapshot (e.g. VM based backup) during the migration.
André
Hello Mate,
I had a same issue few month ago, in which I had to move a VM of about 10TB.
Once I initiated the storage vmotion, it showed some behavior but didn't start in actual. I was not having any datastore which is more than 10TB rather I had 5x5TB datastores to move VM files.
Either you can move the VM to a datastore which have free space greater than your VM size, or simply shut the machine off and move the HDDs one by one.
Thanks! The VM is not 8 TB, it's just one of its disk that is 8TB. I will move only that disk onto a datastore of 10 TB in size. What is the biggest disk you moved successfully?
There's basically no need to worry with storage migration. The original virtual disk will only be removed after a successful migration to the new storage/LUN. Just make sure that there's no task that tries to take a VM snapshot (e.g. VM based backup) during the migration.
André
many thanks a_p_ appreciated! Will give it a try during the night.. or weekends!