Storage VMotion for ESX 3.0.2 and 3.5

[kfkehua]

We have a client with a farm of mixed ESX servers 3.0 and 3.5

can Storage vmotion be done over ESX 3.0 using the Andrew Kutz plugin v0.4.4?? They are licensed for Vmotion.

Also, should I be concerned when moving the VC as it is a virtual machine??

Thanks very much.

[jbogardus]

I have used that SVMotion utility many times for clients and it works very well. I don't remember what was the earlies version of VMware I used it for. It should work with any version of ESX that supports the VMware command line SVMotion functionality.

[azn2kew]

I've used Storage VMotion a lot for ESX migration projects and you can do it two ways neither using command lines or plugin tools as mentioned above. If using vSphere 4.0, it's already integrated with GUI base and does the job really well. If you need steps by steps how to do it here and check out the caveats and restriction guides as mentioned.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

VMware vExpert 2009

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[Troy_Clavell]

sVmotion is only possible between 3.5.x hosts and above. It will not work for 3.0.x

[kfkehua]

I think I'll trust Troy on this.

Then What I'll do is Vmotion all machines that are on the ESX 3.0 to the ESX 3.5 servers first and then do Storage VMotion to another datastore. Does that sound like a plan?

And my second question, should I be worried about the VC? Can i do a storage vmotion on a VC??

[jbogardus]

Yes, Storage VMotion of a VC is fine.

Part of the reason for this is that a VC generally simply initiates processes on ESX servers and has little work to do in executing the actual processes. Another reason is that just like any other general application it's processing is not aware or affected by being on a VM and going through VMotion or Storage VMotion. Like VMotion for SVMotion there is a little delay as the final handoff of processing transfers from one disk to another, but all the application processing within the VM does continue as normal other than the slight delays.