Move Vmware Boot LUN to another aggregate in NetApp

[zaydoov]

Hello All,

I have two Exsi 5.0 in a cluster and i need to move both the two boot LUNs to another aggregates in NetApp. can some one please advise the steps i should follow for such migration.

Regards

[doddap]

Hi Zaydoov,

Moving of luns  among aggregates will result to controller or target number changes? if any one of those changes it will leads to PDL situation.

[zaydoov]

so how i can successfully move the vmware esxi boot volume to another aggregate and allow the esxi server to detect the new boot space

[JonathanKohler]

Use NetApp DataMotion, if moving to another aggregate inside the same NetApp Controller (A > A or B > B)

https://library.netapp.com/ecmdocs/ECMP1196995/html/GUID-A03C1B1E-3DE2-455D-B5AD-89C1389EF0C8.html

If it is to another controller (A > B or B > A), You are going to need downtime to do this either way, so I would either provision a new boot LUN, and rebuild ESXi, or snap mirror the volume over to the other controller and reboot the host for the cutover.

Personally, I'd provision the new boot volume, and rebuild. That gives you some fall back protection, and tight change control.

Jon

[zaydoov]

Thanks JonathanKohler . I was able to finish that, your answer is correct, however, the DataMotion is available in NetApp starting from Version 8 and as i have my controllers on 7.3.7 , the feature was not available

DataMotion is about using vol move command which is not available in 7.3.7 but what i have done to solve that is to use the vol copy command, the key steps required was

1. Create a new volume to act as the destination volume for your ESXi boot LUN in another aggregate
2. the volume must be of the same space or higher that the source volume
3. the volume must be of the same security style
4. Shut down all the VM's
5. Shut down the ESXi
6. offline the ESXi boot LUN
7. offline the new created volume or restrict it
8. start the copying process vol copy start old_volume new_volume
9. offline the old volume and online the new volume
10. make sure that the LUN is now available in the new path in the new aggregate
11. add the LUN to its initiator group so it can be accessed by the ESXi server
12. make sure the LUN is online and power on the ESXi
13. make sure to logon to your Vcenter server and rescan the storage to add the boot LUNS if you want