vMotion doesn't require shared storages to migrate VMs and this capability can be used to perform cross-cluster migrations where the target cluster doesn't have access to source cluster's storage. The migration process is completely transparent to users and processed VMs will continue to run with no service disruption.
vMotion requirements
- the VM must not have a connection to an internal standard switch.
- the VM must not be connected to any device physically available to only one ESXi host, such as disk storage, CD/DVD drives, floppy drives, and serial ports.
- the VM must not have a CPU affinity configured.
vMotion has other requirements not just vCenter. It requires LIKE CPUs and it also requires shared storage. The same storage must be visible from both hosts at the same time. As long as the VM is located on the shared storage and the Host machines have processors in the same family you can pause a VM on one host.
VMware VMotion enables the live migration of running virtual machines from one physical server to another with zero downtime, continuous service availability, and complete transaction integrity. It is transparent to users.
Right-click the datastore on which the
VM is stored and click Browse datastore.
Clone the VM from one host to another:
- Select the VM from the Inventory.
- Right-click the VM and click Clone.
- Select the destination ESXi host.
- Power off the VM on the source host.
- Power on the VM on the destination ESXi host.
If you move a powered on virtual machine and its storage to a new datastore, you use Storage vMotion. Moving a virtual machine to another host and at the same time moving its disk or virtual machine folder to another datastore. You can change the host and datastore simultaneously by using cold or hot migration.
Procedure
- Find the virtual machine in the vSphere Client. To find a virtual machine, select a data center, folder, cluster, resource pool, or host. Click the VMs tab.
- Right-click on the virtual machine and select Move To.
- Select a cluster.
- Click OK.
Once vCenter Servers are registered, Click on “Migrate” Option to start the vMotion VMs between vCenter Servers. Select the option “Relocate” to migrate the VM's between vCenter or Option “Clone” to clone VM from source vCenter to destination vCenter Server.
vCenter Server communicate with ESXi hosts through the vCenter Server agent on each managed host, the software that collects, communicates, and executes the actions received from vCenter Server. The vCenter Server agent is installed the first time any host is added to the vCenter Server inventory.
The VMware EVC Mode is directly related to vMotion. In fact, the term EVC stands for Enhanced vMotion Compatibility. The whole purpose of VMware EVC Mode is to allow the ability to be able to migrate virtual machines between ESXi hosts in the same cluster that are running dissimilar processors architectures.
vMotion does not require environments with shared storage. This is useful for performing cross-cluster migrations, when the target cluster machines might not have access to the source cluster's storage. Processes that are working on the virtual machine continue to run during the migration with vMotion.
Storage vMotionMigration of powered-on virtual machines with snapshots cannot be performed in ESX/ESXi 3. You must either delete the snapshots or power off the virtual machine before the migration. Migration of powered-on virtual machines with snapshots is supported in ESXi 5.0 and later.
vMotion allows you to: Migrate multiple virtual machines running any operating system across any type of hardware and storage supported by vSphere, complete with an audit trail.
How to Storage vMotion a Virtual Machine
- Starting the virtual machine Storage vMotion migration process.
- Choose to Change Storage Only.
- Choose Configure Per Disk to customize destination for each file.
- Changing the location for each file with Storage vMotion.
- Finalizing the Storage vMotion operation.
vMotion are offering few flexible plans to their customers, the basic cost of license starting from $23 per license, read the article below in order to calculate the total cost of ownership (TCO) which includes: customization, data migration, training, hardware, maintnance, updgrades, and more.
VMware provides a variety of ways for virtual machines to access storage. It supports multiple traditional storage models including SAN, NFS and Fiber Channel (FC), which allow virtualized applications to access storage resources in the same way as they would on a regular physical machine.
Configure a vMotion interface using vSphere Client
- Log into the vCenter Server using vSphere Client.
- Click to select the host.
- Click the Configuration tab.
- Click Networking under Hardware.
- Click Add Networking.
- Select VMkernel and click Next.
You should be able to use vMotion, so long as both the source and target ESXi hosts are being managed by your vCenter Server and they both have access to the Datastore that your VCSA resides on. The target ESXi host does not need to be in the same cluster as the source ESXi host.
The easiest way to accelerate vMotion is using 10Gbit connection. This method provides not only better bandwidth but also more concurrent vMotions. If a vMotion is configured with a 1GB line speed, it is possible four concurrent vMotion, while with a 10GB link speed - eight concurrent vMotions per host.
The VMware vMotion technology allows seamlessly moving memory and CPU server workloads between hosts without any downtime or maintenance period to do so. Later VMware introduced what was called storage vMotion which allowed moving the underlying VMDK virtual disks to a new location while the virtual machine is running.
In the vSphere Web Client, navigate to Home > Inventories > vCloud Director Extender. In the Migrations tab, click New Migration. Select Cold migration and click Next. Select the VM that you want to migrate and click Next.
When the whole of the system state and memory are migrated to the target ESXi host, VMotion then suspends the source VM, copies the bitmap over to the target ESXi host, and then resumes the VM operations on that target host. That process happens in less than two seconds when using a Gigabit Ethernet network.
