Moving VM's across VMFS Storage Drives

[SmitheySA]

Hello

I need to move x amount of m$ vm's from one vmfs storage group to another on a shared disk system.

Everything is configured ok, my problem is with the move. When i open the vm's files in storage explorer i get the drop down to move the files to another disk system. This works fine. However when i try to start the vm on the new storage, it refuses to start. When i edit the settings of the vm, the vmdk is still pointing to the old disk system.

What is the correct procedure to move the vm's from old to new vmfs disk systems.

Thanks

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Forums - If you have vCenter you can cold migrate the VMs which will allow you to move where the VMs are stored and modify the VMs vmx (configuration) file to point to the new location of the VMDK file - if you do not have vCenter then it will be a rather manual process - where you will have to manually reconfigure the ocnfiguration file to point to the new location of the storage -

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[depping · Accepted solution]

preferred methods are:

- storage vmotion

- cold migration (vmotion when VM is shutdown)

Both are valid options. If you can afford downtime and don't have enough diskspace for snapshots etc I would recommend cold migration. But you can avoid downtime by using SVMotion.

Duncan

VMware Communities User Moderator | VCP | VCDX

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[AntonVZhbankov]

If you have vCenter then you should "migrate VM" to another datastore.

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[SmitheySA]

Thanks gents. VMotion will do the job perfectly. I havent used VI in quite a while and seems that i need some brushing up on the skills.

Thanks for the quick answers