Moving a vm between hosts faster

[6co]

Hello,

my goal is to make the move of a vm between hosts faster. Here is what I have :

• two physical hosts linked to a switch. Each hosts has 4 NICs. 2 for management, 1 LAN and 1 WAN

• a license for VMware vSphere 5 Essentials on both hosts and we are running ESXi 5.0.0 Update 3

I created two vmKernel on each hosts. The first vmKernel has two NICS (nic1 active and nic2 passive) The second vmKernel has also two NICs (nic2 active and nic1 passive)

Then I log-in to my Vcenter and do a manual move of a vm from one hosts to the other. I would like the trafic to go through both nics in order to minimize the time transfert. However it's only using one nic.

What did I do wrong ?

Thanks for your help

[vThinkBeyondVM]

Plz refer this post in order to configure it Multi-NIC vMotion.

Refer:http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/09/17/multiple-nic-vmotion-in-vsphere-5/      (Plz go through KB link given in this post as well)

[6co]

Hello,

I did look at this. but with the license : VMware vSphere 5 Essential, I do not have vmotion.

What do you think ?

[vThinkBeyondVM]

Yes, you are correct. with essentials licenses vMotion feature is not available.  Minimum license you should have is "Essential plus"

Refer license comparison: VMware vSphere Editions and Kits Comparison | VMware India

[cjscol]

Are you using shared storage, i.e. can both hosts see the same storage that the VM is on?  If so then when you do a move while the VM is down then all it does is unregister the VM from the one host and register the VM on the other host and no data is actually copied.

If the storage location of the VM is moving, e.g. because each host has local storage, then as far as I know it will copy over the management network with only one connection being used and there is no way of getting it to use multiple NICs.

What are the two vmKernel ports enabled for, just Management on both of them?  Do they use the same subnet?

[6co]

Hello,

I am not using shared storage, vm's are stored on the local hard drives of the host.

Yes they are on the ssame subnet.

Thanks for your help.