Is vSphere Replication my only option?

[Phil_K]

Greetings!

My customer is building a new datacenter. We actually have VMware consultants on site but they're primarily working the deployment of the new datacenter. I've discussed some options with some of senior folks on that team but their skill sets don't really match up with this type of work.

Some Background: My team is in charge of planning and executing the datacenter transition. All vCenters will be the same 6.0 version (possibly later depending on the time frame). All ESXi will be on the same version. We will have a two way domain trust between the new domain for the new datacenter and the current domain for the existing datacenter. It's my understanding that enhanced link mode would allow vcenter to vcenter vmotion but without the same Distributed Switch configuration and without being in the same vSphere domain enhanced link mode isn't possible.

So is replication the best option in this instance?

Regards

[vbrowncoat · Accepted solution]

The requirements for cross-vCenter vmotion are here: https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=21069...

Note that they say that "When using the vSphere Web Client, both vCenter Server instances must be in Enhanced Linked Mode and must be in the same vCenter Single Sign-On domain so that the source vCenter Server can authenticate to the destination vCenter Server."

If having them both in the same SSO domain isn't an option check out: http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2016/05/automating-cross-vcenter-vmotion-xvc-vmotion-between-the-same...

Regarding using x-vC vmotion vs vSphere Replication it really just depends on your requirements (# of VMs, size of VMs, bandwidth available, downtime ok?, etc, etc)