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Ravi1987
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Storage vmotion precaution from esx 3.5 to esx 4.0

Hi i have two cluster in my vmware environment. one cluster is runinng with esx 3.5 update 4 and other is runing with esx 4.0 which is newly build cluster.

all the luns are visible on both clusters as we are migrating machine from 3.5 cluster to 4.0 cluster. we will do this by storage vmotion as we have some 6 tb new storage in new cluster.

please tell me what precaution we need to when we do storage vmtion of 500 Gb virtual machine from 3.5 cluster to 4.0 cluster.

we have near 10 linux machine to migrate on new cluster.

please suggest me.

Ravi
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kesparlat
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If this machine doesn't have RDMs, you can first do a Vmotion and run it in ESX4 host, after you can do sVmotion in the new host.

Upgrading hardware to version 7 is not a must, so you can do this when you will be able to shutdown your prod machine.

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dominic7
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You're actually looking at 2 atomic transactions.

1 VMotion from ESX 3.5 -> ESX 4.0

2. Storage VMotion ( entirely on ESX 4.0 host )

( Even if you pick the option change host and datastore it will invoke these 2 transactions )

You will want to make sure that you format your LUNs on the ESX4 cluster to get VMFS v3.33 and if your VM has a 500GB .vmdk you will need a 2MB+ block size, but outside of that (and assuming your cluster is set up correctly) there isn't really anything to it. I've moved (literally) thousands of VMs this way.

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kesparlat
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You must be cautelous with your RDMs. By default Storage Motion "virtualize" all your RDMs, so if you have some VM with RDMs you must shutdown the VM, eliminate the RDM, migrate the VM with sVmotion and finally add the RDM disk again.

Regards.

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Ravi1987
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Thanks for reply,

what happen when my machine move from hardware version 4.0 ( esx 3.5) to hardawre version 7.0 ( esx 4.0).what are the process to do this upgradation.

Ravi
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kesparlat
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First Upgrade Vmtools in VM.

Second shutdown VM and upgrade Hardware.

It runs fine without inconveiences.

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Ravi1987
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i have one linux production machine which we can not shut down plus this machine dont have vmtools installed. please let me know how can i handled this case. because as i upgrade this machine it will ask me to upgrade vmtools first then rest.

Ravi
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kesparlat
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If this machine doesn't have RDMs, you can first do a Vmotion and run it in ESX4 host, after you can do sVmotion in the new host.

Upgrading hardware to version 7 is not a must, so you can do this when you will be able to shutdown your prod machine.

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Ravi1987
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Thanks Champ

Ravi
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