Vmotion

[m.jamali]

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

[Uwe Zessin]

??
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.

[wobbe]

You also need the same CPU in both servers.

[Uwe Zessin]

EVC relaxes this requirement a bit.

[m.jamali]

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.

[Sheldon Smith]

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.

[Kapil Jha]

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+

[m.jamali]

realy thanks.

[Gordon Sjodin]

You should have vsphere installed to assist in vmotion functionality.

[Uwe Zessin]

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.

[Gordon Sjodin]

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

[Uwe Zessin]

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.

[Matt Palmer_2]

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

[Uwe Zessin]

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

(Not speaking against PowerCLI - it is GREAT!)

[Gordon Sjodin]

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

[Uwe Zessin]

"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.

[Gordon Sjodin]

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?

[Uwe Zessin]

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