Advice needed for moving/migrating VMs between 2 physical data centers

[steve31783]

Hi All, I have a very specific scenario that I'm looking for some guidance/advice about. We have a satellite site closing down. This site has 3 ESX hosts, hosting about 30 virtual machines. These virtual machines all need to move to our corporate location.

Location A - West Coast, Satellite Site:

3 ESX hosts, Some VMs on local storage, others on SAN storage - Currently managed by their own Virtual Center

Location B - East Coast, Corp HQ:

20 ESX hosts, All VMs on SAN storage

I have plenty of storage and host resources available to absorb the 30 VMs that need to move to my infrastructure (once everything is moved, I'll acquire the physical hosts and licenses from the satellite location). Basically what I need guidance/advice about, is HOW to get these VMs over to this new location, with as little downtime as possible. Due to the time in which this project need to be done and other reasons out of my control, replication between the two Clariion units is not possible. Physically moving the hardware is also not possible. This basically leaves me with file copies of the vmdk files from their old location, and then onto my SAN. If anyone else has any other suggestions, please let me know. I'm also looking for hints, tips, tricks, products, anything anyone can provide me to make this process easier. I'll be headed out to the satellite site in about a week to kick off this project, so any help anyone can provide would be appreciated.

[kucharski]

Basically what you are going to need to do is shutdown a couple of virtual machines and then copy the entire directories that each of the vm's reside in from one san to the another from the service console. Which satellite office is closing A or B. Hopefully it is B. Once the directories are on Location A, right click on the vmx file and say ADD to INVENTORY and then a wizard will come up and walk you through a couple of steps and then you can power on the virtual machine and then change the ip address of vm once in.

Michael

[steve31783]

It is location A, the satellite site that is closing.

Basically I'll be copying the files from the West Coast, over to the East Coast. Why do you say hopefully it's location B? It's going to be a pain either way

I'm looking into purchasing something like ESX Replicator...but just trying to see all my options, just in case.

[steve31783]

One other quick question...how can I copy from one SAN to the other via service console when the hosts at my satellite site can't see the SAN I need to copy the files to?

[patk]

One other quick question...how can I copy from one

SAN to the other via service console when the hosts

at my satellite site can't see the SAN I need to copy

the files to?

You will be able to copy the virtual disks from an ESX host at your satellite location to a LUN at your main office so long as you use an ESX host at you main office as an intermediary. You would accomplish this using a secure copy or SCP:

scp source.vmdk root@destination:/vmfs/volumes/destination_LUN/destination.vmdk[/b]

Also I have developed a bullet-proof procedure regarding VI2 to VI3 migrations that I have applied successfully to 11 hosts, with 67 virtual machines. I would be more than happy to email you the document. It even has screenshots.

In the event that the downtime required is undesireable, you may want to investigate Vizioncore's esxMigrator product:

http://www.vizioncore.com/esxMigrator.html

[mcwill]

If you can access the remote ESX hosts, couldn't you use the VMWare Converter Utility to move each VM across?