VMotion Question

[heybuzzz]

So.... I have my 3.0 farm setup with 6 host and about 50 VM's.When I created my VM I didn't have any attached storage at the time so my VMDK files are on the local host drives.

I now have an attached storage option and wonder if/how VMotion can move my VM's from one host to another. I was told that since the VMDK files weren't created on the attached storage Vmotion won't work.

I can turn off a VM and use Importer/converter to move them from host to host all day long, but want to get Vmotion working so I don't need to down my VM's.

Thanks

[crazex]

If I understand you correctly, you had all of your ESX Boxes with the VMFS on local storage, and you now have a SAN/NFS solution, that you will be using as shared storage. Correct? If that is the case, your only option will be to Cold Migrate your VMs from the DAS VMFS to the SAN/NFS VMFS. Vmotion only works with shared storage, so unfortunately you will have to have some down time to move them. I suppose you could however, use VMware converter to move them over, but that would take much longer, and you would still have some brief downtime while you failover the network.

-Jon-

[heybuzzz]

If I understand you correctly, you had all of your

ESX Boxes with the VMFS on local storage, and you now

have a SAN/NFS solution, that you will be using as

shared storage. Correct? >

Yes

So basically, once I get my SAN solution going I will need to power down my VM's on the host and cold migrate the entire VMFS of my host server to the SAN?

[Jazzer]

Correct. Sorry, I learned the same lesson, but we were in our pilot phase.

[Ken_Cline]

So basically, once I get my SAN solution going I will

need to power down my VM's on the host and cold

migrate the entire VMFS of my host server to the SAN?

Not really - you don't have to do an entire VMFS at a time, just a VM at a time. That could be one or more .vmdk files and associated metadata (i.e. .vmx, .vmxf, nvram, etc.)

If you use VirtualCenter to do the cold migration, you don't have to worry about all the "parts and pieces" - VC will move everything you need.

[TitanFan]

I agree with Ken!

Since you said you want to use Vmotion, we can infer that you do have Virtual Center installed. Doing a cold migration on a vm at a time is the best way to go, because as Ken said VC does alot of the work for you.

So what I am saying and I think he is saying is ... use VC to do these cold migrations.

[heybuzzz]

Yes, I have VC.

Yeah, we got our servers up and running very fast (The Boss wanted it) and now we need to get all the bells working. I just had fun with converter moving our 2.5 VM to our 3.0 hosts.

I plan on attaching the storage and Vmotioning them one at a time. I then hope to get ESX ranger up and running after that and start snapshoting my VM's for DR.