Relocate VM vs Migrate VM

[vSohill]

Hi

Is there any differnce between Relocate VM (vCenter vMotion) and Migrate VM (vCD migration)?

Thank you

[Alim786]

In simple terms, vCenter Motion is know as cross vcenter migration and in essence it is moving a VM from one vCenter to another vCenter typically to a different site.

vCD Migration or vCloud Director migration is importing and exporting to/from a Cloud platform.

[MKguy · Accepted solution]

Some use the terms interchangeably, but a Relocate operation commonly refers to a storage vMotion, i.e. moving the VM files from one datastore to another on the same physical host.

Contrary, a Migration refers to a normal vMotion that only moves the VM's memory and compute state from one physical host to another. The VM files remain untouched on the same storage location.

Since vSphere 5.1 they also introduced what's commonly called "enhanced" vMotion (shard-nothing migration), it allows you to live-migrate VMs to another physical host and datastore at the same time.