Storage vmotion best practices

[Ravi1987]

hi we currently using esx 3.5 with 30 TB of Cx4 storage with 60 LUNs on all esx server. now are preparing to buy new 50 TB storage and will migrate all the virtual machine to new storage with new version of esx server also.vsphere .problem is that for storage vmotion from 3.5 to 4.0 we need to shutdown all the virtual machine then after we can do the storage vmotion.can any body tell me how can i do hot storage vmotion from esx 3.5 to 4.0 with zero downtime.

[jpdicicco]

VMotion the VMs to ESX 4 hosts, then SVMotion their storage as a separate action in vCenter. You shouldn't have any downtime.

JP

[DSTAVERT]

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_upgrade_guide.pdf

Have a look at page 19

Also a good listing of resources

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/upgrade-center/resources.html

[Ravi1987]

Thanks For your reply.

I have more then 50machine which is having 3 to 5 virtual disk. some esx will not moved to 4.0 hence we have to do stotage vmotion from esxx 3.5 to esx 3.5 .now i know we can do storage vmtion in 3.5 after shuting down the virtual machine.as the the GUI privided by Vmware. but please tell me is that possible ( storage vmotion) without shutdown the virtual machine in VI3 . iF yes then please let me know.or if you have better idea fo this activity then please let me know also.because it will be a huge and production critical activity as i already mention i have to do storage vmotion without downtime.

[DSTAVERT]

If you read the upgrade guide it talks about storage vmotion and upgrading 3.5 and 4. The whole point of storage vMotion is to hot migrate from one storage device to another.

Visit the vSphere upgrade Center. Go through the videos, and webcasts. Get the upgrade checklist. Make sure all your hardware is on the hardware compatibility list.

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/upgrade-center/resources.html

You should also set up a test environment and practice the procedures.

[Ravi1987]

Please tell me about esx 3.5 to esx 3.5

[DSTAVERT]

READ the information in the links. Watch the videos.

[Ravi1987]

hi ,

links are very good but stiil ( may be i m not able to find the Vedios where Hot storage vmotion is provided.)

[lldmka]

Hi,

You can peform storage vmotion with ESX 3.5 using the remote command line interface - see the RCLI Installation and Reference Guide (page 52) for instructions:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_rcli.pdf

The RCLI package needs to be installed on Winodw or Linux, or you can import a RCLI virtual appliance.

Mark

[Rumple]

For my esx 3.5 environments I just use this plugin

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vip-svmotion/develop

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vip-svmotion/files/vip-svmotion/vip-svmotion-1.0/vip.svmotion-bin-1....

Obviously you will want to test it, but it worked fine in all the environments I used it for. Drag and drop storage vmotion using the VC client...

[Ravi1987]

Thnaks For reply.

Please tell me what r the best practice which we need to follow and what are the check ilists we need to follow before starting live storage vmotion because my most of the server are highly production critical.

thanks

[lldmka]

Storage VMotion is subject to the following requirements and limitations:

• Virtual machines with snapshots cannot be migrated using Storage VMotion.

• Virtual machine disks must be in persistent mode or be raw device maps.

• The host on which the virtual machine is running must have sufficient resources to
  support two instances of the virtual machine running concurrently for a brief time.

• The host on which the virtual machine is running must have a VMotion license,
  and be correctly configured for VMotion.

• The host on which the virtual machine is running must have access to both the
  source and target datastores.

• VMware Infrastructure 3 supports a maximum of four simultaneous VMotion or
  Storage VMotion accesses to a single datastore

Best to test on some non-critcal VMs in your environment to see how it goes. I have run it on critical VMs during business hours, but generally limit to one per host at any one time to avoid disk I/O contention.

Mark

[Rumple]

I also agreewith the 1-2 limit on storage vmotions.

I was doing 3 of my non critical at once before, but the critical ones I moved during outage windows (just incase it went to hell).

Better to plan for an outage and not have one (and brag later) then to not plan for it and have to explain the outage later.