Moving a VM from one set of hosts to a totally different set of hosts (and drive)

[codejoy]

I am still working and figuring out VMWare, but we have deployed two clusters: Each identical - two hosts both connected to a powervault with vmotion HA enabled.

But with the supply chain issues we haven't gotten our third power vault to handle a third and different cluster yet. Though I would like to start building and working on the VMs that the third cluster will house, I just don't know if I can work on a VM and then move it over to the proper cluster when it arrives? (I know vmotion won't do that at least not how we have it set up) so I am curious if there is a way to like 'download' the VM file and then 'upload' it to the new set of clusters and let it carry on its merry way?

[maksym007]

What type of Datastore are you using? vSAN or VMFS? Why not add the same Datastore to another Cluster and use this Datastore in two clusters at the same time? After that, you just migrate only VM to another cluster and at the end un-attache Datastore from the Cluster that is not required.

[codejoy]

It is a dell powervault so they have sas cables, so two servers attach to one powervault. Serve A runs all the VMs server B is there in case it has to failover HA. That is one cluster for us, the second cluster is totally unrelated to the first cluster as we separate these clusters out by the function of systems they connect to on site.

I also realized I could probably use their converter tool worst case scenario. I just didn't want to rebuild the VM all over again once we got the third and final set of servers and powervault in and where the VM I want to create and move over will ultimately live.

[a_p_]

In case the hosts are at least in the LAN (not in separate locations with small bandwidth between them), you can migrate the VMs to another host even without shared storage using the vCenter Server built-in Migration Wizard.

André

[codejoy]

Oh I didn't know this, each host has several vlans that can see all our network. So I think this would be easy to do I just didn't know in vCenter where to do that and figured since it was not part of the vCenter cluster it didn't know about other hosts somehow. But this seems like a good option.

[StephenMoll]

Assuming all clusters are managed in the same vCenter:

1. Right click VM and select "Migrate..."
2. Select migration type "Change both compute resource and storage"
3. Select the compute resource to move to.
4. Select the storage the Vm is to move to.
5. Check the networks are correct and that compatibility checks pass.
6. Check the details are correct at the "Ready to complete" step and hit [FINISH].
7. Wait...

If it isn't possible for any reason the compatibility check will give you some clues as to why.

[codejoy]

Ty i think that is the crux, each cluster is managed by its own vCenter so I will (once new servers are setup) have 3 vCenters

[StephenMoll]

Are the vCenters on the same network?

In which case vCenter Enhanced Link mode might be an option, even temporarily.

Or even unregister a host from one cluster and temporarily register with the other to do the migration and then do the reverse.