Upgrade vs. Storage Vmotion

[edawg]

Hello-

I have an ESX 3.5 cluster running a mission critical hospital application on 8 vms. The cluster has two LUN's presented to it that are being used almost 100% by the assigned vms. There is practically 0% free space on either LUN. I am in the middle of migrating the vm's to a new Clariion and have a question about what is less risky....My first thought was to upgraded to vSphere 4 so I could use the new and improved version of storage vmotion to migrate the vms to the new SAN. My concern with this approach is I won't be able to take snapshots of the vm's (due to lack of free space on the LUN's) prior to upgrading the VM hardware and tools, which according to the upgrade path is highly recommended. My other option is to wait to upgrade to Vspere 4 until after I have used Storage vmotion to move the vm's to the larger LUN's. If I do this I can take snapshots, since I will have plenty of disk space, but I will have to use the older storage vmotion associated with 3.5.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what is risker? Usint storage vmotion 3.5 or upgrading to vsphere 4 without the ability to take snapshots of the vm's prior to upgrading the vm hardware to v.&???

Thanks,

[RParker]

but I will have to use the older storage vmotion associated with 3.5.

vMotion is simply moving machines while they are on. There are no new changes are additions to this feature, it's been there since 3.0 came out. 3.5 and 4.0 ESX hosts are fully compatible with vMotion anyway, so the "new" improvements are just speed.

Build new ESX 4.1/4.0 hosts, migrate the VM's and create the snapshots, no need to wait for ALL hosts to be the same.

[Troy_Clavell]

I would use sVMotion to do this, if your LUNS are running out of disk space. You will need to ensure that the source ESX Host can see the new storage. Another option, if you can afford the downtime is to cold migrate to the new datastore.

As for 3.5, my choice would be to use the GUI Plugin rather than the cli

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vip-svmotion/

below is also a how to:

http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/vmware-esx-articles/vmotion-drs-high-availabil...

[golddiggie]

Migrating to ESXi 4.x from 3.5 would have more steps involved... Depending on how your hosts are utilized you could migrate the VM's from one host to the others, update it to ESXi 4.x, connect it to both storage arrays, pull the VM's over to it, then migrate them over to the new storage array... You might need to have brief outtages of the VM's while you svMotion them...

This is something you would want to test out, in your particular environment, with low risk/impact VM's before going to the critical items. Hopefully, you have enough host resources so that you can update at least one host without risk.

Before I would even try to start, I would make sure that the hardware your ESX 3.5 cluster is running on is on the HCL for going to ESXi 4.x (hopefully it's listed for 4.1 as well)... Make sure you fully review the upgrade and install doc's before starting too... Remember vCenter 4.1 requires a 64 bit OS now. I've found that going to Server 2008 x64 (NOT R2) has less difficulty attached. I would also recommend putting the db on another VM (SQL 2005 or 2008, your choice these days)... Unless you have a HUGE environment, you can easily run vCenter on a VM (as well as Update Manager, either on the same VM or one of it's own)... When I say huge, I'm talking about 100+ hosts. Even then, you could just break the vCenter instances into cluster level management, then link them together, so that you manage them all from a single console...

What are your current host servers configured like? Make, model, RAM, CPU's, NIC's, etc...

VMware VCP4

Consider awarding points for "helpful" and/or "correct" answers.

[edawg]

Thanks Troy..I forgot I would need the plug in for 3.5...(It has been a while since I needed to to svmotion in 3.5) So it sounds like upgrading the hosts to 4 first to be able to leverage the built in svmotion would be the way to go, even though I can't take a snapshot of the vm before I upgrade the virtual hardware on each vm? In the past I have upgraded vmware tools with no snapshots so I don't suppose upgrading the virtual hardware without a snap is too big of a risk...

[Troy_Clavell]

before any upgrade to ESX 4.1, you must first do vCenter and it's modules. As for snapshots before tools and hardware upgrades, there is nothing wrong with that (assuming you don't do it to a Domain Controller).

However, if you're out of disk, like you said, you can't leverage the snapshot functionality.

[edawg]

Four hosts on Dell PE 2950's that should be on the HCL for 4. I have already upgrade to Vcenter 4 u 2 and was going to take your advise and migrate all vm's off a host, upgrade it clean, add it back to the cluster then move to the other three hosts until they were all upgraded. Once I had finished the upgrade path, vmtools, virtual hardware, etc. I was then going to use svmotion to move the vms to the new SAN. My only risk/concern with this is not being able to take snapshots of the vms prior to upgrading tools and hardware....

At this point I am not ready to go to 4.1 until I have a 64 bit Vcenter server ready. I agree with you I will probably virtualize it when ready.

[mnisadmin]

Hi,

Is there a storage vmotion for vcenter 4.1