move VMDK files

[zulu5]

Ladies & Gents,

I have an MS 2 node cluster. Obviously the shared drives are all RDMs. However, the descriptor (mapping) files (VMDK) are located on a datastore, along with the virtual boot OS drives. I have storage-vmotioned the OS drives off to another data store. However, I cannot get rid of the original datastore as the descriptor files for the shared drives (RDMs) are still there and I cannot move them. I guess I can go throught remove/re-attach RDMs process and place the VMDKs on another store. However, for this I would have to go through the cluster administration as well and I really would like to avoid that. My wuestion is: is there a way to move the VMDK files for RDMs without removing and re-attaching them? A perhaps a similar way to storage vmotion? Any suggestions would be greatly appriciated.

Regards

Igs

[HannaL]

Did you try svmotioning the RDM's too? VMware no longer uses snapshots for svmotion when the hosts are ESX4 which this new kb article explains allows RDM's to be moved during SVMotion too.. Did you try it? Look like remove/readd is the other option but you should still be able to SVmotion just the RDM mappings.

Migrating virtual machines with Raw Device Mappings (RDMs)

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1005241

Hope that helps

Hanna

[zulu5]

Hanna, first thank you for your reply.

I just thought that most of the disks are shared (locked), since it's an MS cluster so both nodes would probably have to be shut down. However, each machine has an RDM drive of its own for paging file. I just shut down the passive node and tried to svmotion that drive. No luck. Came up with the following message:

Incompatible device backing specific for device 0

May be it should be done with the CLI?

[HannaL]

Hrm. yeah MSCS may impact locking of the disk. Not sure. Are there any peripheral devices attached to the VM? You are not changing hosts right? I know with MSCS you aren't supposed to vmotion not sure about RDM. May need to research it further. Is this ESX or ESXi? Version 3 or 4? You don't need to use the cli for svmotion anymore in vsphere.

[zulu5]

it's ESX 4 (vSphere) (updated with ESX400-200907001.zip). No peripherial devices of any kind. Even CD is disconnected. It's a 2 node Windows 2008 R1, Exchange 2007 MSCS. It's true you can't vmotion MSCS in a worm state. And shared disks are always live, as long as at least one node is up and running. But I even tried to svmotion a disk that is not shared, machine's own RDM 😧 drive (Paging File). That's when it came up with that strange error. I'm not changing hosts, only the storage vmotion.

Thank you for your help

Regards

Igs

[HannaL · Accepted solution]

Hrm.

Even though the CD rom is not connected at all make sure it is not set to Host type. Check every other device in the edit settings hardware tab just in case. Other than that not sure..

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/9105247

HTH

Hanna

[zulu5]

I've removed the CD-ROM and re-added it, although it was set to client. Still the same error persisted while I tried to svmotion the RDM across.

I removed it completely then re-added the disk, specified the new store and all went OK. This is probably the way I might have to do it.

Hanna, thank you very mich for your help

Regards

Igs

[zulu5]

logged a call with VMware support. They said it cannot be done. Full stop.

Hanna thank you for your help