How to Perform Storage Migration – VMotion
We sometimes come across data storage alerts to take necessary actions for storage to make sure our data is safe, it can mostly be related to storage hardware. When we look into virtualization, there is a high chance of moving data from one storage location to other storage locations.
If you are using VMWare virtualization solution, then you need to move your virtual machines and their storage to another storage media. For this purpose, we will use VMWare Storage VMotion. With Storage vMotion, you can migrate a virtual machine and its disk files from one datastore to another while the virtual machine is running. With Storage vMotion, you can move virtual machines off of arrays for maintenance or upgrade. You also have the flexibility to optimize disks for performance, or to transform disk types, which you can use to reclaim space.
WARNING: You need to make sure that the data store to which you are moving the virtual machine will retain at least 100GB free space after the migration.
Recommendation: Avoid errors recommend that you should have setup data stores with proper name conventions. For disaster recovery, name those storage locations with DR label, so that you can easily identify the storage for DR and for normal virtual machines.1.
1. In VCenter, right-click on the virtual machine which you want to move and select Migrate.
2. Select the radio button for 2. Change Datastore, Move the virtual machine’s storage to another storage destination.
3. Select the destination datastore. Make sure the destination data store should have the same file system as of the primary one so that the VM can write in the same way.
4. On a next screen, select the destination data store for VM to store the data.
5. Click “Next” and “Finish” on the next screen to start the migration. The task will show up in the Tasks view at the bottom of the VSphere client. It may take several minutes depending on the size of the VM’s disks to get moved to new data store.
