Scenario:
Migration from local direct attached storage on single ESXi host to more flexible environment with multiple ESXi host with new shared storage profile.
Some considerations:
- The migration will create full clone VMs on new storage profile so please take the storage usage into consideration before starting the move. Look at thin provisioning on VMs hard disk.
- Can you afford to shut down the VMs or not for migration, this will affect your effort.
- Just not vAPPs needs to be moved, also remember your vAPP templates and media. I would start with the vAPPs and media first.
Within vSphere client:
Go to VM storage profiles (normally accessible from the main home screen on both regular and web client.
Select “Manage storage capabilities”
Create a new storage capability and provide name
Done
Select “Create VM storage profile”
Provide name
Select the storage capability just created before
Done
Create storage cluster within the datacenter which is assigned to your Provider VDC.
Add the shared storage datastores to the cluster.
Verify that all the datastores are seen by the ESXi hosts.
Very important, and i have forgotten this which will cause users to be unable to deploy vAPPS:
- Within Vcenter client select the datastore, right click and select “Assign User-defined storage capabilities”
- From drop down select the previously created storage capability.
These datastores should now be visible within vCloud director.
Within vCloud director:
There are a few ways to migrate your vAPPS over to the new storage profile, which is really refreshing to see multiple options and this certainly did become very useful for us since there is a bug in vcloud 5.1.2.1068441 for making use of the “move to” feature and your IP/Mac addresses are not retained.
(Previous post describes the symptoms and workaround)
Taking the above bug into consideration for retaining MAC/IP, and the different workload involved with each here are the ways to migrate over.
Method 1:
Take into consider that in my version 5.1.2.1068441 when you perform this task it will not retain the MAC/IP source addresses and if you have NAT’s configured for VM’s on the Edge gateway this will not work anymore and you have to recreate these with new ORG ip assigned to VM. Subsequent version will probably have this resolved so not an issue. Run a test before moving production vAPPs!
1. Shut down your vAPP, right click and select “move to”.
2. Next to each VM, click drop down box and change the storage profile to the newly created.
3. Perform this for each VM and select OK
4. Done, and super easy!
5. The same steps can be used for vAPP templates and media.
Method 2:
This method requires a lot more effort but also find that you can do perform a hot storage vmotion, which means you don’t have to shut down the VM. It will also retain the MAC/IP address of ORG VDC network.
1. Open the vAPP.
2. Select the VM properties.
3. Under General tab scroll down to bottom and select from drop down the new storage profile
4. This will perform a storage vMotion on the backend which can be observed from vSphere client.
5. Perform this task on each VM.
This will however only move over the VM’s… the vSE (vShield Edge) VM which serves the network for the vAPP does not get moved over, so you have to do this manually through the vsphere client with storage vmotion. ( NOTE: I perform this task with the supervision of VMware support and they do require that you have the latest versions of ESXi and Vcenter server installed. Perform at own risk and I take no responsibility but this worked perfect for me without any problems. Versions I currently have installed:
a. vCenter server 5.1.0 1123961
b. vCloud director 5.1.2.1068441
c. ESXi 5.1.0 1157734
Interesting result and resolution:
After I moved all my vAPPS, vAPP templates I reviewed the old datastores with Lctree application tool and it showed no VM's anymore on the datastore, BUT when i go to vsphere client and look at datastore it shows a bunch of VM's still associate to the storage..wow what is going on?
After some debugging I found that it is only the media files which are still linked to the VM as an ISO. Just eject the CD/floppy from virtual machine by right click on VM within vCloud director.
Resources:
A great tool to use to view the linked clones and any VM's still on old storage profile datastores.
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