vmotion for MS SQL, Domain Controller, Oracle database

[stevenfoo]

We have vsphere 5.0 essential plus installed on 3 physical hosts and a vcenter 5.1 virtual appliance managing them.

We have VM with MS SQL, Domain Controller, Oracle DB and etc on those 3 physical hosts.

All the VMs lun are residing on the same NetApp storage that provision to the 3 physical hosts via FC SAN switch.

We are planning to add additional memory as well to update the vsphere 5.0 with latest patch.

We want to know in your experiences any issues if we performed vmotion for VMs like MS SQL, Domain Controller and Oracle database:

1) Database hang or Inconsistent database state after vmotion for MS SQL, Oracle, Sybase or any type ?

2) OS inconsistency?

3) Inconsistent state for domain controller?

We just want to make sure that vmotion does not affect the any of the production VMs running.

Thank you.

[admin]

There is no issue at the application level while doing vMotion on VMs.

[stevenfoo]

Aakash,

Do you mind to share your environment and have you done any vmotion on ms sql 2008, oracle DB, domain controller and etc?

[admin]

Steve I have worked on thousands of customer vSphere Datacenter environment and have done vmotion of business critical VMs many times. Trust me, you don't get issues when doing a vMotion at the app level. As a Test, you can clone those VMs and do a vMotion

[stevenfoo]

Aakash,

Thank you for your kind feedback information.

We don't have test MS SQL or domain controller VMs running. All those are productions.

I simulate one VMs on windows 2003 with MySQL (less critical). It has not issue.

I just want to confirm on the domain controller and MS SQL and oralce DB since they critical.

[admin]

As I mentioned earlier, there should not be an issue. If you are skepctical about doing it, perform the vmotion during non-production hours..

[weinstein5]

I will add my vote to there should be no issue -

[stevenfoo]

Aakash,

Thanks. Will submit an approval for the vmotion and test it out.

Thanks to weintein5 as well for the confirmation.

[admin]

To further add, thats the reason we have most of the customer enabled DRS in Automated mode so that the vCenter can load balance the VMs across the hosts in the cluster. Now in order to load balance DRS has to vMotion the VMs across the hosts and these VMs does include SQL, Exchange and DCs... Please mark my answer as helpful or correct if that guides you

[Josh26]

stevenfoo wrote:

We have vsphere 5.0 essential plus installed on 3 physical hosts and a vcenter 5.1 virtual appliance managing them.

We just want to make sure that vmotion does not affect the any of the production VMs running.

Thank you.

Yet another vote for "you won't have any issues".

I do however query why  you appear to be upgrading ESXi with patches, without just jumping to 5.1? If there was ever a good time to bite the bullet, it's now (unless you're a Backup Exec user).