Moving a VM to a different storage along with its iscsi disks

[vgovani]

Hi All,

We are migrating our VMs from a snap storage to a NFS volume on netapp. Below is the challenge for migrating our exchange server:

Exchange VM is on a NFS share on a snap storage. This VM also has two iscsi disks connected to it from the same storage. These two iscsi disks contain exchange logs and store respectively.

Now we want to move the whole exchange VM to a NFS vol on netapp. The challenge is how do we also move the iscsi disks data?

Is there any way? Or should we just build a new server and restore exchange IS from backups? Please help.

[dburgess]

So not familiar with 'a snap storage' device but I assume you have a device which is presenting NFS and iSCSI Luns and the iscsi Luns are presented inside the guest with software iscsi initiator and not mapped as VMFS volumes?

You can storage v.motion the disk that is presented via the NFS volume direct to you're new Netapp. The iscsi luns assuming they are initated from the guests will require you to take the vm down or maybe just the app (exchange) create new iscsi presented LUNS on your netapp and copy the contents from one to the other.

[mittim12]

You could also try to use converter to move everything to the new storage though since it's exchange you would need to take it offline.

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[vgovani]

Hi Dburgess,

You are right. Snap is a storage that is presenting NFS and iscsi. And iscsi disks are mounted within the VM using MS iscsi initiator.

But how do I copy the lun contents to new LUNs from netapp? Will it be simple copy and paste? Or any special techniques required?

[vgovani]

Will converter take care of everything like iscsi disks and create similar disks in the new NFS volume on Netapp?

[dburgess]

Given what you describe a simple recursive file copy should suffice - as long as the app is down at the 'time'

So Create the new NFS volume on Netapp

Mount that to the ESX servers.

s.vmotion the main disk to the new NFS datastore - can be done while the app is up.

Create two new isci - targets on the netapp

Assume your exsting targets are mounted d: and e:

Mount the two new targets with the software initiator

Format the two new targets and mount them.

Check they are all working etc they will be mounted as f: and g: say

Close down the app

Copy all of 'd:' to 'f:' and 'e:' to 'g:'

Unmount d and e

Remount f and g as d and e

Restart the app.

[mittim12]

Yes, converter would grab the iSCSI luns inside of the VM and convert them over to VMDK format on the NFS. I believe you would have to go into the advanced configuration of converter to specify them as seperate VMDKs. The default lumps all of the storate into one big VMDK.

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