[TriLUG] Semi-OT: vmware vmotion

[David Black]

Getting the inspiration from someone else who wrote a similar script using the VMware API, I put together a bash script that does a suspend-unregister-reregister-resume to effect a poor man's vMotion.  It leverages ESXi ssh access and included commands.   The downtime when moving a VM this way is proportional to the amount of RAM in the VM, typically 5-20 sec for my setup.

Like vMotion, the VM must reside in a datastore visible to both source and destination ESXi hosts.
If the VM must be moved from one datastore to another, that's doable too but involves an intermediate copy operation (takes longer).

If anyone wants, I'd be happy to post or share 'vmove' and a companion script 'vclone' that clones VMs.

Dave

----- Original Message -----
> Jason,
> 
> For vMotion to work, you need the correct license (Enterprise I think)
> to enable vMotion *and* a shared storage solution (NFS, shared iSCSI,
> or SAN).
> 
> If your two servers only have a locally attached datastore (on-board
> SATA/SAS drive), you will not be able to vMotion your VM. The best you
> can do is suspend your VM then move the files to the other data store.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -Ron
> rkelleyrtp at gmail.com
> 
> On Feb 22, 2011, at 12:42 PM, Jason Evans wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I've got 2 servers both running esxi 4.1 each with 1 datastore. I'm
> > trying to get vmotion to work between the two servers with the VM
> > powered on without creating a go-between NFS share. In vshpere, I
> > have a datacenter (XYZ) created and under the datacenter, I have
> > cluster (ABC) created. In the cluster is host 1 and host 2. The VM
> > is running RHEL5 and the goal is to migrate it from host 1 to host 2
> > without shutting it down. All of the documentation that I've seen
> > says that an NFS share must be created or an external LUN must be
> > connected to for this to work. Is there another way of doing this?
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Best Regards,
> > Jason
> > --
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> This message was sent to: David Black <dave at jamsoft.com>
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