Storage motion from VMFS to vSAN

[mutthu]

We are using VMFS shared storage from traditional iscsi storage in a cluster. We plan to install a vSAN cluster. The same vcenter will manage both VMFS and vSAN datastores, but they will be in a separate cluster. The ESXi hosts at vSAN will not have access to iSCSI storage.
Is that possible to make a storage motion(migrate from vmfs to vSAN) of VMs?

[paudieo]

yes that's possible see KB https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2150597 

[mutthu]

Thank you for the link.
Do not both Cluster's ESXI have to have shared storage? ESXI in the VSAN has to see the VMFS at the traditional cluster, and the traditional cluster's ESXi has to see vSAN's cluster.

[paudieo]

no not necessarily

they can be seperate set of hosts or clusters or you can present VMFS and vSAN to same hosts / clusters

[Tibmeister]

Nope, this is a Shared Nothing Storage vMotion.  The caveat is that the Management VMKernel will be used when the storage is not shared, so if you have that on a 1Gbps link, that's the speed in which you will run.

[a_p_]

@Tibmeister Are you sure about the Management Network? AFAIK this only comes into play for cold migrations, but as I understand it, it's going to be a live migration, where the data will be transferred across the vMotion network.

André

[mutthu]

We know that right-click and migrate will work in the traditional cluster if the ESXi hosts share the storage or two vcenters in the Enhance link mode. How will vSAN storage be visible to the VMFS's ESXi hosts to perform the Stroarge motion?

Method 2 mentioned to present the SAN to vSAN ESXI and remove it once it completed, but vMotion will move the VM to the SAN storage which is mounted at VSAN ESXI then we have to do another vMotion?.

[a_p_]

>>> How will vSAN storage be visible to the VMFS's ESXi hosts to perform the Stroarge motion?

That's not necessary, it only needs to be accessible from the target host.

André

[mutthu]

So we have to present the old SAN's storage(iscsi/NFS) to vSAN ESXI hosts, in this case the ESXi host at the vSAN cluster will have both Vmfs and vSAN storage,  am I correct ?

[a_p_]

>>> So we have to present the old SAN's storage(iscsi/NFS) to vSAN ESXI hosts ...

No, you don't need to do this. The source host needs to have access to the old storage, and the target host needs access to the vSAN. That's it.

André

[zeroboy]

Instead of using the "Change Storage Only" option (which makes it necessary for the host to see old VMFS and new VSAN Datastore), go for the "Change both compute ressource and storage", this will use vMotion (not Storage vMotion) to transport the VM to the new datastore, without presenting old and new datastores to the hosts.

That's what @Tibmeister  was referring to in his post I guess

[AKwee]

Another alternative solution. You can configure vSAN ( version 7 update 1) file share service, integrated into the existing vSAN Storage Policy-Based Management on a per-share basis, it can be mounted by other esxi host( as NFS client) not in the same vSAN as datastore. EAM will deploy FSVM ( file service VM) to provide file share service in vSAN.

[Tibmeister]

If OP has the license yeah, that's an option, or exposing the vSAN datastore outside of the cluster as well.