Datacenter Conslidation Methodology

[esxadmin440]

So I work for a company that will be conslidating datacenters. By "consolidating datacenters," I mean to say that the goal of the project is to migrate all servers from datacenter A to datacenter B where Datacenter A and B are located at different physical locations many miles apart. These two locations will be connected via a T3 connection.

I'm wondering what the best methodology is for migrating the servers from one DC to the other. I'm guessing Site Recovery Manager is the way to go but wanted to see if there are alternatives.

[Troy_Clavell]

SRM will work, but depending on how many guests you are talking about, you may look at a free alternative by using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 4.3

...also, my assumption is that you already have a VI at DataCenter B, if you are looking at SRM.

[esxadmin440]

Thanks for the quick response. Yes, both datacenters currently have there own vCenter Servers and own separate ESX environments. The number of VMs to be moved is between 30 - 40.

[Troy_Clavell]

shared or replicated storage between to two Datacenters?  If so, you can also look at powering down the guests, removing them from inventory on your DataCenterA Hosts, and then browsing the datastore(s) and adding to inventory on the DataCenter B Hosts.

If no shared storage, SRM wouldn't be a bad choice.

[kermic]

I tend to believe that SRM is The tool for this. Have heard of multiple success stories where SRM was used this way.

Alternative option could be establishing array replication and doing the failover manually over night, however then you are more limited in testing options and have to do much more manual operations (read: more chances for human-errors).

If license cost is not a big issue, I'd recommend to do a failover of at least critical / downtime sensitive VMs with SRM.

WBR

Imants

[esxadmin440]

Good stuff, thanks for the quick responses. In regards to array replication, kind of an ignorant question, but is that something that is set up through VMWare or more on the SAN side of things? Is there any good articles from VMWare that you may know of on array replication?

Thanks again.

[Troy_Clavell]

.... In regards to array replication but is  that something that is set up through VMWare or more on the SAN side of  things

This is a SAN thing.  I would contact your Storage vendor.