topic Re: Vmotion in Operating System - VMware

Vmotion

m.jamali — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:16:02 GMT

hi..
i have a 2 server.both of them instaled esx.4 with some application.
how can i Vmotion this server's.

Re: Vmotion

Uwe Zessin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 11:43:44 GMT

??
You cannot "vmotion a physical server".

VMotion transfers an active, running virtual machine from one running ESX server to a different running ESX server, provided that all technical requirements are met.

One of the requirements is to have a VMkernel IP interface on each ESX server that is enabled for VMotion traffic.

Re: Vmotion

wobbe — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:52:00 GMT

You also need the same CPU in both servers.

Re: Vmotion

Uwe Zessin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:53:10 GMT

EVC relaxes this requirement a bit.

Re: Vmotion

m.jamali — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:24:06 GMT

hi dear...
thanks for answer....
can you complete explaine about vmotion.i don't have a expereance about vmotion.thank you for help.
have a good time.

Re: Vmotion

Sheldon Smith — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:24:28 GMT

A good place to start would be the http://www.vmware.com/ site. Also, search Google for key words like:
vmware, vmotion, introduction

First few hits on Google include a number of youtube videos that purport to talk about VMware Vmotion.

Re: Vmotion

Kapil Jha — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 04:31:56 GMT

you have 2 ESX server, running various VMs
and you want to move 1 VM from one ESX machine to other
If this is what you looking for

right click on machine there is a option vmotion select the destination machine and hit OK it would move the VM to to other machine.
If vMotion was not configured properly before you would get the error and u can fix it up.
VM would not be affected it would keep on running.

If you want to learn how VMOTION works you would like to see vmware knowledgebase.

BR,
Kapil+

Re: Vmotion

m.jamali — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 07:14:18 GMT

realy thanks.

Re: Vmotion

Gordon Sjodin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:10:26 GMT

You should have vsphere installed to assist in vmotion functionality.

Re: Vmotion

Uwe Zessin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:17:22 GMT

Not sure what you are trying to say, but EVC is present in ESX 3.5 (Virtual Infrastructure) and VMotion is much older - I've used it in ESX 2.5.

Of course, for new installations it makes sense to use ESX 4 - which m.jamali does, if you reread the first paragraph.

Re: Vmotion

Gordon Sjodin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:37:42 GMT

This person will need a vsphere client installed on a windows machine to invoke the migration.

Re: Vmotion

Uwe Zessin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:48:49 GMT

Good point. For VMotion you do need a vCenter/Virtual Center server (which can run in a Windows VM and it requires an extra license!) and the client, which can run on a Windows desktop/notebook.

Re: Vmotion

Matt Palmer_2 — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 08:04:36 GMT

Hi,

you can use the Vmware powercli without vsphere and it will allow you to use vmotion as follows:

get-vm test | move-vm -destination (get-vmhost esxhost)

regards

Matt

Re: Vmotion

Uwe Zessin — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 13:51:39 GMT

PowerCLI requires a Windows system anyway, so you can install the vSphere Client on it, too ;-)

(Not speaking against PowerCLI - it is GREAT!)

Re: Vmotion

Gordon Sjodin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:25:01 GMT

Are you sure Vmware powercli does not require vsphere installed? I understand it is just a command line interface to administer your vsphere commands.

Re: Vmotion

Uwe Zessin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:40:00 GMT

"vSphere" is just an "umbrella name" and not a specific product. With all those name changes every couple of months it is hard to do a discussion without any ambiguities (but VMware is not the only company that does it).

PowerCLI enhances the Windows Powershell CLI with access to VMware APIs. You can connect a PowerCLI session to a central vCenter (previously known as "Virtual Center") server or directly to an ESX server.
To initiate a VMotion, you connect to vCenter.

My point was that when you're using PowerCLI, you have a Windows system on which you can install the vSphere Client (the management GUI) on this system, too. If you meant to say that you need a vCenter server for VMotion - true.

Re: Vmotion

Gordon Sjodin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:44:59 GMT

Thanks for the clairification. We just bought two new vmware servers that will not be part of our current cluster. They will just be two esx servers side by side attached to a small SAN. They will not have interaction with a vshere console so I cannot see anyway to do a live migration from host to host. The best I could do would be to shut the guest down and manually bring it up on the other server. Does esx look after the disk locks or is vsphere responsible for this?

Re: Vmotion

Uwe Zessin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:49:04 GMT

The VMkernel in the ESX host locks the VM files when the VM is powered-on. It does not require a vCenter server.