vCloud to vCloud Migration

[barnette08]

I think I know the default answer to this, but I am looking/hopeful for a "none-traditional" method of migration roughly 100 VMs from one running vCD instance to another. 

Is there a better way to do this, rather than the typical download/upload method to catalogs or the use of vCloud Connector?  These environments are physically in the same location, but their cells are on 2 different logical networks, which have to be routed to communicate.

I have used vCC before, but their operations seem to be very slow and typically fail.  We don't have vCC setup in this environment so we would rather not spend the time setting one up if there are alternatives such as scripting.

[cfor]

Officially vCloud Connector is the tool for this - however it may or may not work as you need.

One method that will take some setup (but might be worth it if you really need to move a bunch of stuff) -- would be create some scripts to do something like this:

vCenter1 - Clone VM you need moved

vCenter1 - Unregister VM

Move the VM to whatever the new storage is

vCenter2 - Register the VM

vCloud2 - Import VM (with Move option)

vCloud2 - Configure network ect on the VM/vApp

vCloud1 - Stop

vCloud2 - Start and validate

I know this is a simplification, but really the best way might just be export/import -- and at least VMware has a product to help wit that approach - vCC (vCloud Connector)

[barnette08]

Thanks for the reply cfor, I might just try to take the time and re-deploy a new vCC environment or go with the import/export idea.  Basically the thing that stands out about the vCC method is that its far less clicking and manual moving, even though it might take a little longer. 

[barnette08]

I ended up going with the export/import method, but doing them from VMs with lots of resources and vmxnet3 NICs.  I mapped both of them to a share on the same network and downloaded directly to the share and uploaded directly from the share.  That way I wasn't bound to disk speed.  I tried downloading to the local VM, but the speed was just way too slow in this environment.