Storage Migration of MSCS servers

[Cameron2007]

i am currently undergoing migration from the legacy EVA storage to the new Netapp storage. I can do cold migrations of VMs and can also resize them and move the virtual disks using Vmware convertor. All single instance servers and disks have been migrated succesfully.

The current environment is ESX 3.0.1. Due to issues with 4GB Emulex HBAs on Netapp for clusters this will be upgraded (by rebuilding to 3.5 and readding to the ESX cluster).

Question:how do I migrate the clustered instances to the Netapp storage while preserving the thick disk status of the quorum and all other clustered disks? or will I have to rebuild these MS clusters?

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Please note that VI3.5 does not currently support MSCS. So if you do use 3.5 you will enter an unsupported configuration.

You can copy the VMDKs from one LUN to another via the SC, you could use vmkfstools -e then vmkfstools -i with the proper setting, you could use 'clone' via VC, you could use scp to copy from one server's VMFS to another VMFS.....

Lots of ways to preserve the Thick disks. I would suggest one of the ESX methods over VMware Converter unless you needed to resize the drives. Then in that case I may just rebuild them.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[Cameron2007]

Hi Edward,

thanks for your prompt response. i had seen previously an issue around using 4G Emulex HBAs which said this was unsupported by Netapp for clusters . So in order to get round that it was recommended to go to at least 3.0.2 but I feel that to get the best performance and features it is probably best to go to 3.5. So it seems that with either solution there will be some lack of support

I wonder if you could also clarify a couple of points for me here:

1. was clustering fully supported under 3.0.1

2.was clustering fully supported under 3.0.2

Some of the VMs were built with larger OS drives than we weant to put on the new environment (due to the way the Netapp LUNS were carved -OS LUNS, Page File LUNS- not backed up and Data LUNS) so some resizing may be required but we have a contractural agreement to get rid on the EVA storage anyway.

So would your answer be that we have to delete and rebuild these after all?

[Texiwill · Accepted solution]

Hello,

The speed of the SAN is really not an issue, it is the OS Version. VI3.0.x supports MSCS. You do need to read the VMware MSCS PDF for those versions. VI3.5 DOES Not currently support MSCS.

I would migrate the VMs to the new SAN as is using one of the ESX specific methods, cloning, scp, etc. I would install the new server with VI3.0.2 w/patches and not upgrade to 3.5 until VMware states there is support for MSCS.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[azn2kew]

How big is the .vmdk files needs to migrate to different storage systems? If its a lot of machines than I suggest using faster mechanism neither Veeam FastSCP or using other command method with blowfish feature below. Also attached MSCS doc for your reference!

gzip -1 </vmfs/path/file | ssh -c blowfish-cbc machinename gunzip ">" /vmfs/path/file ->quick copy vmdk files

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

"The Power of Knowledge"