VM Migration between two ESXi hosts when vCenter Server is on WAN

[jean-marc_lagac]

We're currently in the planning stage of a project and I'm trying to determine the impact on our network when the vCenter Server is on another city. In short, the vCenter Server would be controlling two ESXi hosts through the WAN.

The ESXi both have local datastore at this point, no shared datastore.

What happens when I migrate a powered-off VM from the first ESXi host to the second one (I assume here that both the VM and the storage is migrated at the same time).

Are the two ESXi hosts talking to one another making the migration happen on the local network where they are located

OR

Is the migration going through the vCenter Server making the migration happen on the WAN?

Thanks a lot in advance!

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Jean-Marc Lagacé

Senior Software Consultant

BancTec (Canada), Inc.

[Troy_Clavell]

a cold migration goes over the management network of your ESXi Hosts. And it will move the VM from it's source local storage to it's destination local storage.

[jean-marc_lagac]

That part I understood... what is the involvement of the vCenter Server... Where is the network traffic going to?

Is it?

which is great because the GB of disk image is not leaving the local network on Site B

OR

which is bad because the GB of disk image is going through the WAN twice.

OR

Something else entirely?

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Jean-Marc Lagacé

Senior Software Consultant

BancTec (Canada), Inc.

[jean-marc_lagac]

So yes the communication happens all on the mangement network.

The virtual machine is copied directly from the source host to the target host and nonce of the virtual machine files are transmitted to the virtual center server (a great thing).

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Jean-Marc Lagacé

Senior Software Consultant

BancTec (Canada), Inc.