A fast way to move a VM

[vlelli]

esx 3.5

cluster with 2 hosts esx1 and esx2 each with a local disk

SAN emc2 configured with 3 luns

I need to move a VM configured on the datastore local to esx1 to a shared datastore in lun1 on the san

Currently I use the steps:

- backup VM from the backup server

- delete the VM

- from the backup server using vmware converter, restore of the same VM to the different datastore

Is there a fast way for this operation ?

Thanks in advance,

Valter

[Troy_Clavell · Accepted solution]

If you have a VCMS and both hosts can also see the shared storage, you can power down the VM, right click on it and choose migrate. During the process it will ask you if you want to keep or move the storage (or somethig to that affect) choose move.

[weinstein5]

That will work - or you can unregister your vm from ESX host and then scp the directory containing your virtual machine files to the new host and reregister the vm on the new host - this should be quicker than your method since your ar eonly copying the data one time - but as Troy said using virtual center is really the easiest way to do it

[kastlr]

Hi,

maybe I missed something, but how could you implement a cluster with local disks?

If both ESX servers would have access to the "shared" SAN LUN's, why not use Storage VMotion?

You could leave the VM online while the copy job from local to SAN storage occurs in the background.

It's not a fast way, but it's a way without a downtime.

[vlelli]

Thanks for all answers.

I ignored the easier way (the option to move the storage ) as suggested by Troy, and I thought that the only way was to do a manual operation as suggested by weinstein5.

So I'll use option one.

Valter