Create and move linked clone

[mschwalm]

Hi,

My company is using VMware ESX 4 servers, managed via Vcenter.

To optimize storage, we've created a lot of linked clones, but we have now to move them in an other datastore, and an other host.

I know that move linked clone is not easy, somebody knows the procedure to do that ?

Thanks.

Michael, Network Administrator

[Troy_Clavell]

as far as I know you cannot sVMotion linked clones. Are you using composer? I would say maybe you could destroy the linked clones, move the parent and redeploy.

[mschwalm]

No, one of our developpers has developped a program which generate the linked clones.

Destroy the linked clones will not be appreciate by users, a part of these "VMs" are quite important for our activity...

Michael, Network Administrator

[Troy_Clavell]

This may be a case where you may have to Open an SR. However, if these linked clones were created by your developers and not a VMware product, you may be yourself in an un-supported state.

Maybe your developer can come up with something?

[geddam]

You cannot move linked clones to another datastore on fly..The only way to move here is...

1. Create another snapshot for your image.

2. Perform a recompose of your image, using recompose option.

3. Select different datastore in recompose wizard.

Crude way of moving these files will work for movement, but view composer replica thread will be broken as it carries unique UUID for the base image with datastore. Which means, linked clones will not work if you perform a crude way of moving the files.

Thanks,,

Ramesh. Geddam,

VCP 3&4, MCTS(Hyper-V).

Please award points, if helpful

[lamw]

I think the OP stated that he is NOT using View to created Linked Clones, note that Linked Clones can be generated using both Lab Manager and View, but it's not limited to only those products.

As of vSphere 4.0, there have been some features added to the vSphere API which allows users to generate their own Linked Clones similar to that in View in a supported fashion. Not many people know of this feature and there is even a VMware wp on this, here is a link with all the various "Linked Clones" scripts that I've written including reference to the wp: http://planetvm.net/blog/?p=777

I want to say it 'should' be possible, but this is something I've not tried before. I'm contacting one of my colleagues to see if he's ever perform this operation. You can vMotion LC's between hosts, so long as the storage is seen by both host, I can't see why it won't work with sVMotion so long as the host can see both datastores. With VMware View, you generally have replica and all Linked Clones in a single datastore, but it does not have to be done that way and I've written shell scripts to generate unsupported Linked Clones which can span multiple datastoers where your "replica" can reside on one datastore and your Linked Clones spread across multiple datastores.

I would say the easiest way is to create a Linked Clone off of a new base image and see if you can sVMotion the base and Linked Clone individually and see if the VM is still functioning.

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

Twitter: @lamw

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

VMware Developer Community

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[WJST]

If you cannot vmotion or svmotion the replica/source clones, because they are locked you can unlock them and then migrate them. Worked out fine in our 4.0 environment:

http://blog.wjst.nl/?p=1

This can be achieved using the “sviconfig” configuration utility
installed by default on the VCenter server located in the VmwareView
Composer program files folder.
Use the following command line options for sviconfig:bq. -operation=unprotectentity
-VcUrl=https://VCENTERServer/sdk
-Username=Username
-Password=PASSWORD
-InventoryPath=”/VMDataCenter/vm/VMwareViewComposerReplicaFolder/replica-VM-UID-STRING”

- http://www.wjst.nl

[continuum]

I also create linked clones manually - if your guy used the same way it is quite easy.

You have to move the full bunch of linked clones - so that you include all the parent disks.

Then you have to walk through all the snapshot-descriptor files and adjust the parentFileNameHints to the new path.

Tricky - but if you proceed with care - its doable




___________________________________

VMX-parameters- Workstation FAQ -[ MOA-liveCD|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VM-Sickbay