Move VM between vApps

[red_davelee]

Hello

I'm looking at moving a VM from one vApp to another within the same Organisation vDC.  It seems that, rather than a move, vCD is making a clone, registering the clone in the new vApp and then deleting the VM from the original vApp.  This means that I need double the storage space available while "moving" the VM and it's going to take ages to clone a 1Tb+ virtual machine.

Is there anyway I can get vCD to actually do a move?  Failing that, is there a way to remove a VM from the vCD interface but leave it running in vSphere so I can import it again?  Although I suppose that's going to do a clone anyway to import it so I'm probably not saving myself any time here.   Has anyone got a solution to this?  It would be really good if we could do this - even if it were limited just to vCD/vSphere admins...

Dave

[akkayyakapisett]

You should able to perform the move.

Shutdown/stop the vApp and VM in vCloud and right the VM to move the VM to required vApp.

Venkat

http://www.peeradmin.com

[red_davelee]

Hi Venkat

Yep, right clicking and using the Move To option does work.

The problem I see with it is that, in the "back end", in vSphere, it's actually taking a clone of the VM, registering it in the target vApp then deleting the original.  This means I need double the space allocated to the Virtual Datacentre and, depending on the size of the virtual machine, it can take a very long time to move it.  I'm looking for an alternative that will take less time to do and not require the additional storage.  I'm happy for this to be something that I have to do for users rather than something that needs to be done in the vCloud Director interface.

Dave

[nellermann]

I must Vent. vCloud Director was not designed and built with any common sense. You are correct, the dumb portal wants to clone VMs for any operation from a move to an import. It is ridiculous! When all you want to do is make a simple "move" of a VM from one vApp to another, in vCenter you would have just dragged and dropped the VM from one Resource Pool to another, that is all vCD should be doing. But no, it wants to first clone the VM but wait if you have a 10 VM limit on the virtual datacenter with 10 VMs, it fails because you need 11 VM limit. Then it fails because you won't have enough storage allocated to the virtual datacenter. Then once the clone has completed, your VM now most likely has different network settings and just blew up your server's applications, domain and trusts.

I can't understand why VMware has not put more effort into this management platform. About the only thing it offers of any value you the virtual console proxy. Why don't they just port it to the vCenter web portal architecture? I could replace vCD in that case since the allocation and quota management in VCD is so screwed up, I would prefer to not have it at all.