Best Practice - Migration VMs with RDMs

[jamiestarr66]

Hello all, new to the channel.
I have a project involving migrating 600 VMs to a new datacenter, 60 VMs has RDM (physical storage) configured. The customer
is leaning toward HCX but is hesitant since this will be a complete move to the new Data center.

Can someone please provide:
1.  What is the best practice for migrating VMs with RDMs?
2.  The customer has a 5gb pipe between the two datacenters to support migration. How do I calculate or determine
     bandwidth utilization?
3.  What would be other options other than HCX to support the migration efforts?
     
     Thanks in advance...

[ChrisFD2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Jamie,

1 - Physical RDMs cannot be migrated. Consider converting the Physical RDM into a VMDK or change compatibility mode to virtual. 

2 - Migration performance is down to many factors, such as storage, host resources, bandwidth, packet loss, latency, data churn rate, number of disks, size of disks etc etc. I've seen as much as 1 Gbps on 10 Gbps using vMotion and bulk migration but again, it depends on multiple factors. YMMV, you'd have to perform some testing to be sure.

3 -  Outside of VMware products nothing springs to mind, however do bear in mind products such as SRM and vSphere Replication would have the same Physical RDM limit.

Hopefully this helps.

[jamiestarr66]

Hi Chris..

This is perfect, thanks for responding.