Storage vmotion of Full Clone desktops

[NoDowt]

Hi All,

As I understand, you cannot storage vmotion Linked-Clone VM's & instead move them via a rebalance task... However, what about Full Clone VM pools? I'm thinking they'd be fine, but haven't found anything to confirm this.

I need to move a few Full Clone VM's to a new datastore for maintenance purposes this weekend.

Cheers

Jason

[BenFB · Accepted solution]

Full clones can be safely storage vMotion.

Configuring the vSphere Environment for View Composer

Use vSphere DRS. DRS efficiently distributes linked-clone virtual machines among your hosts.

Note:

Storage vMotion is not supported for linked-clone desktops.

Migrate Linked-Clone Virtual Machines to Another Datastore

Note:

Do not use vSphere Client or vCenter Server to migrate or manage linked-clone virtual machines. Do not use Storage vMotion to migrate linked-clone virtual machines to other datastores.

[rnapiza]

I'm in the same situation, where I need to convert linked clones to full clones, ideally, with no downtime.

I've seen articles where we can clone them.

However, can we storage vmotion linked clones to another datastore.  This would be going to manual full clone pool.

[sjesse]

You can't move the linked clones in anyway to another datastore without causing problems. I just had to do this with around 100 linked clones. The only option I was aware of was to create a manual pool, shut down a linked clone, clone it to a new vm, start it, remove it from the domain, add it to the domain using the new name, and then add it to the manual pool. It was about 20 minutes of download per desktop for me over a few weeks.

[rnapiza]

Thanks for that.. What kind of problems would it cause? 

[sjesse]

The composer service, the one that made the linked clones, tracks every aspect of where the vm is. If you move anything it will go in an error state and be inaccessible.

[rnapiza]

hmm.. our goal is to not use the linked clone anymore, as long as that VM is accessible as full clone in a manual pool.

Would the remaining linked clones be affected or just the one being moved?

[sjesse]

That why you clone all the linked clones to full clones, and then add them to the manual pool, then you can just delete the linked clone pool and information those desktops is still intact.

[rnapiza]

was hoping to use sVmotion to save a few steps and reduce downtime

[BenFB]

You can't storage vMotion since the linked clone disk has a reference to the replica (You can see this in the descriptor file. Reads come off the replica and writes go to the delta disk). You must do a clone.

[bjohn]

Is cloning a linked clone to a full clone even supported?

[BenFB]

Yes, see Converting a linked clone virtual machine to a full clone virtual machine (1026753).