migrate VMs to the new cluster via vcloud director

[Michal Tarcak]

Hello,

Is there any way how to online migrate production workload between provider vDCs (two clusters) in vmware cloud director? Due to HW lifecycle we'd like to move vcloud workload to the new vsan cluster, so storage is not shared. Everything works fine for workload outside of vcloud (cross-cluster vmotion) but in the vcloud seems to be a problem. 

Thanks for any suggestion.

 

 

[Sree]

Does that mean you are planning to map VSAN cluster to another PVDC ? Is th new VSAN managed by same vCenter which is connected to existing PVDC ? 

[Michal Tarcak]

Yes, a new VSAN cluster (resource pool from there) is added to the vCloud as a new Provider VDC.

Yes, a new VSAN cluster is managed by the same vCenter as the old cluster, which has also the dedicated Provider VDC.

[Sree]

You can map new vsan storage policies to existing PVDC for time being and migrate the VM to new policies. Whether you can do live migration, totally depends upon how the underlying network is connected and the EVC compatibility of both the clusters. 

[Michal Tarcak]

Unfortunately, I'm not able to add vSAN storage policies to the existing PVDC (it's not choosable). It's probably because the old cluster does not have access to vsan storage (and its storage policy). Provider VDC "compute" is added by resource pool.

 

I'll try to explain my situation more to give more clues:

- one vCenter with 2 clusters

1. old cluster with traditional iscsi storage from the disc array

2. new vSAN cluster

- so neither compute nor storage is shared

- VMotion network and VM networks are shared.

- for workload outside of vCloud Director I'm able to do cross-cluster vmotion (Migrate -> Change both compute resource and storage) and everything works perfectly.

 

vCloud Director situation:

1. Old cluster is added with its resource pool as Provider VDC, with its datastores (and base on that also with its storage policies).

2. New cluster is also added with its dedicated resource pool as another Provider VDC

- Each cluster has its own DVS and portgroups (external networks in vCD)

Seems like there is no way to trigger the "Change both compute resource and storage" operation from vcloud director

 

- I'm trying to move VM to the new vApp within the same organization (old vapp in old Organization VDC - added to org from old Provider VDC , new empty vApp in new Organization VDC - added from new Provider VDC), but it doesn't work online. I'm able to move VM like that only when it's powered off. This only works online when its shared compute - So I'm able to online migrate VMs between storage policies (=datastores), but only when i got shared compute, which I don't have in this case

 

Thank you for your answers

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sree]

Most likely you will need to explore VCD API calls to check potential migrate/move calls, that being I would also recommend opening an SR for getting this confirmed. However no harm in trying out if you have some test machines for these executions. 

[Michal Tarcak]

I have already tried to look into API calls but didn't see anything usable. The "best" thing I found was this one:

https://vdc-repo.vmware.com/vmwb-repository/dcr-public/06a3b3da-4c6d-4984-b795-5d64081a4b10/8e47d46b-cfa7-4c06-8b81-4f5548da3102/doc/doc/operations/POST-MigrateVm.html

But it doesn't work for my usecase as I don't have shared storage.

Anyway, thank you for your try, even if we didn't find a solution.

[Michal Tarcak]

problem solved in version 10.3.2.19473806

VMWare most likely implemented this feature natively into vcloud