SAN Storage physical Movement Plan with out downtime.

[Ravi1987]

Hi we currently using esx 3.5 with 40 TB of Cx4 storage with 60 LUNs on all esx server. We will have a physical movment of all the esx server and storage box after 5 month as our current contract with current building is over.. Currently we have 300 virtual machine running on all vmware Infrastructure.we will have a temporary storage of 50 TB on second building to host virtual infrastructure.Distance between two building is 50 meter. our prime conern is how we can move storage box on other location without downtime.our current plan is configure second storage and mount all luns required on all esx server ,then do the storage migration of all the virtual machne from one san box to other san box.after completion whole storage migration move san box .can any body have other paln for this activity so we can laid out this plan without any downtime.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

I think you have several issues.....

1) Movement of Storage

2) Movement of VMs

Here is what I would do.

As you stated setup a link to existing ESX hosts for all the storage.

vMotion all VMs off at least 1 maybe 2 hosts. Physically move these hosts to the new location and hook them up to both storage devices.

vMotion off the VMs from one host to the moved ESX hosts. Then storage vMotion the disks for those VMs to the new storage.

Repeat the process until all VMs are moved.

I would also setup a few test machines and test/practice your process until you have every step properly written down and tested. This is a major move but it can be done without any downtime with the proper use of vMotion/SVMotion.

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009

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[meistermn]

Here are my experience from my storage migration:

I migrated 595 VM's and 35 TB from an old netapp 6070 storage to a new netapp 6080 storage .

In the frist step all esx host were on esx version 3.5. The VC was version 4.0.

After I migrate some VM's per storage VMOTION, i got a time out at 8 % and the failture message was "Source detected that destination failed to resume.",.

So looked at vmware http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101004...

For me this was not the option, because I don't wanted to reboot 595 Vm's.

If you can , maybe this powershell script http://ict-freak.nl/2009/11/17/vsphere-storage-vmotion-fails-with-a-timeout/ help's .

After that I decide to upgrade the esx version from 3.5 to 4.0. And bingo, I had no storage vmotion timeouts anymore!!!

ALthough this helped a lot to fasten the upgrade from esx 3.5 to 4.0.

Result was : 22 ESX Hosts were upgrade . Took me 3 days.

585 VM's were storage vmotioned without downtime . The esx hosts are HP DL 585 G2 and HP DL 585 G5

10 VM's were storage vmotioned with downtime, because the esx hosts HP DL 585 G1 cannot be installed with esx 4.0.

Next Step was to automated the storage vmotion from a csv file and vc schedule tasks with a powershell script:

Look at at svmotion script

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1405978#1405978

The total migration took 1 Month ! That was great.

Lessions learned: ESX 4.0 uses storage vmotion version 2 . esx 3.5 usses storage vmotion 1.

Other infos:

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2008/12/real-world-experiences-using-storage-vmotion.htm...

Vbscript storage vmotion:

http://vikashkumarroy.blogspot.com/2009/10/storagevmotiondoc.html

Powershell:

http://blogs.vmware.com/vipowershell/2008/06/fun-with-powers.html