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  • 1.  Storage vMotion + multiple VMDKs in multiple datastores

    Posted Sep 19, 2013 11:06 AM

    Hi

    Is it possible to use vSphere 5.1 Storage vMotion to move a VM with multiple VMDKs in multiple datastores into 1 new datastore?

    thanks



  • 2.  RE: Storage vMotion + multiple VMDKs in multiple datastores

    Posted Sep 19, 2013 11:11 AM

    Is it possible to use vSphere 5.1 Storage vMotion to move a VM with multiple VMDKs in multiple datastores into 1 new datastore?

    Yes, provided, the multiple disks in multiple datastores is seen by both the hosts. And the new datastore must also be shared..



  • 3.  RE: Storage vMotion + multiple VMDKs in multiple datastores

    Posted Sep 19, 2013 11:12 AM

    Yes, and actually that is the default behaviour. Unless you specify advanced options in Storage vMotion (mograte - change datastore) wizard, all VM files are migrated to a single datastore that you choose as destination.

    If you click the Advanced >> button, then you can choose what to do with VM files (home directory) and individual disks - leave them on current datastore or move to specified.



  • 4.  RE: Storage vMotion + multiple VMDKs in multiple datastores

    Posted Sep 19, 2013 05:50 PM

    Yes it is possible to do the storage VMotion with multiple VMDk files in multiple datastore but you need to selecty the advance option and need to define the new datastore location.

    Regards

    Oscar

    Your Oscar



  • 5.  RE: Storage vMotion + multiple VMDKs in multiple datastores

    Posted Nov 13, 2013 05:19 PM

    ou can do them both in parallel in the sense of simultaneous operations on the same datastore, as well as in parallel across datastores.  

    First -  simultaneous operations on the same datastore.... Regarding If you look at this guide page 246.

    "VMware Infrastructure 3 supports a maximum of four simultaneous VMotion or Storage VMotion accesses to a single datastore. A migration with VMotion involves two simultaneous accesses to the datastore, by the source and destination hosts. A migration with Storage VMotion involves one access to the source datastore and one access to the destination datastore. Therefore, if no other migrations are occurring, up to four concurrent Storage VMotion migrations involving the datastore can occur simultaneously."

    BUT - in my experience, you don't net a lot from this.    Normally with a single filecopy, there's some benefit of simultaneous multi-threaded copy processes, but remember, it's likely that this datastore already has a bunch of IO that it's doing.   Can it help?   Sometimes - but personally, I'm all for the next thing....

    Second - parallel across datastores.... Absolutely leverage this.    If you do it - you can get N jobs at once, where N is  the number of datastores you have on the cluster, but cannot exceed 32 (because you can only have one SVmotion per ESX host, and a max of 32 per cluster with VI 3.5)