vMotion prerequisites:

Host Configuration for vMotion Each host must be correctly licensed for vMotion. Each host must meet shared storage requirements for vMotion. Each host must meet the networking requirements for vMotion. Network prerequisites: Migration with vMotion requires correctly configured network interfaces on source and target hosts. vMotion requires a Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) network between all vMotionenabled hosts. Each host enabled for vMotion must have a minimum of two Ethernet adapters, at least one of which must be a GigE adapter. Recommended networking best practices are as follows: Use one dedicated GigE adapter for vMotion. If only two Ethernet adapters are available: For best security, dedicate the GigE adapter to vMotion, and use VLANs to divide the virtual machine and management traffic on the other adapter. For best availability, combine both adapters into a bond, and use VLANs to divide traffic into networks: one or more for virtual machine traffic and one for vMotion. Configure the virtual networks on vMotion-enabled hosts as follows: On each host, configure a VMkernel port group for vMotion. Ensure that virtual machines have access to the same subnets on source and destination hosts. If you are using standard switches for networking, ensure that the network labels used for virtual machine port groups are consistent across hosts. During a migration with vMotion, vCenter Server assigns virtual machines to port groups based on matching network labels.

Note You cannot migrate virtual machines that are attached to a virtual intranet with vMotion, even if the destination host has a virtual intranet configured with the same network label. If you are using vSphere Distributed Switches for networking, ensure that source and destination hosts are members of all vSphere Distributed Switches that virtual machines use for networking. Use of Jumbo Frames is recommended for best vMotion performance. vMotion Shared Storage Requirements: Configure hosts for vMotion with shared storage to ensure that virtual machines are accessible to both source and target hosts. During a migration with vMotion, the migrating virtual machine must be on storage accessible to both the source and target hosts. Ensure that the hosts configured for vMotion use shared storage. Shared storage is typically on a storage area network (SAN), but can also be implemented using iSCSI and NAS shared storage.

Migration with Storage vMotion

Using Storage vMotion, you can migrate a virtual machine and its disk files from one datastore to another while the virtual machine is running. You can choose to place the virtual machine and all its disks in a single location, or select separate locations for the virtual machine configuration file and each virtual disk. The virtual machine does not change execution host during a migration with Storage vMotion. During a migration with Storage vMotion, you can transform virtual disks from thick-provisioned to thin-provisioned or from thin-provisioned to thick-provisioned. Storage vMotion has a number of uses in administering virtual infrastructure, including the following examples of use: Upgrading datastores without virtual machine downtime. You can migrate running virtual machines from a VMFS2 datastore to a VMFS3 datastore, and upgrade the VMFS2 datastore using a two step process. You can then use Storage vMotion to migrate virtual machines back to the original datastore without any virtual machine downtime.

 Storage maintenance and reconfiguration. You can use Storage vMotion to move virtual machines off of a storage device to allow maintenance or reconfiguration of the storage device without virtual machine downtime. Redistributing storage load. You can use Storage vMotion to manually redistribute virtual machines or virtual disks to different storage volumes to balance capacity or improve performance. Storage vMotion Requirements and Limitations A virtual machine and its host must meet resource and configuration requirements for the virtual machine disks to be migrated with Storage vMotion. Storage vMotion is subject to the following requirements and limitations: Virtual machine disks must be in persistent mode or be raw device mappings (RDMs). For virtual compatibility mode RDMs, you can migrate the mapping file or convert to thick-provisioned or thin-provisioned disks during migration as long as the destination is not an NFS datastore. If you convert the mapping file, a new virtual disk is created and the contents of the mapped LUN are copied to this disk. For physical compatibility mode RDMs, you can migrate the mapping file only. Migration of virtual machines during VMware Tools installation is not supported. The host on which the virtual machine is running must have a license that includes Storage vMotion. ESX/ESXi 3.5 hosts must be licensed and configured for vMotion. ESX/ESXi 4.0 and later hosts do not require vMotion configuration in order to perform migration with Storage vMotion. The host on which the virtual machine is running must have access to both the source and target datastores. there are limits on the number of simultaneous migrations with vMotion and Storage vMotion.

DRS Prerequisites:
Shared Storage Requirements A DRS cluster has certain shared storage requirements.

Ensure that the managed hosts use shared storage. Shared storage is typically on a SAN, but can also be implemented using NAS shared storage.

Shared VMFS Volume Requirements A DRS cluster has certain shared VMFS volume requirements. Configure all managed hosts to use shared VMFS volumes. Place the disks of all virtual machines on VMFS volumes that are accessible by source and destination hosts. Ensure the VMFS volume is sufficiently large to store all virtual disks for your virtual machines. Ensure all VMFS volumes on source and destination hosts use volume names, and all virtual machines use those volume names for specifying the virtual disks. Processor Compatibility Requirements A DRS cluster has certain processor compatibility requirements. To avoid limiting the capabilities of DRS, you should maximize the processor compatibility of source and destination hosts in the cluster. vMotion transfers the running architectural state of a virtual machine between underlying ESXi hosts. vMotion compatibility means that the processors of the destination host must be able to resume execution using the equivalent instructions where the processors of the source host were suspended. Processor clock speeds and cache sizes might vary, but processors must come from the same vendor class (Intel versus AMD) and the same processor family to be compatible for migration with vMotion. Sometimes, processor vendors have introduced significant architectural changes within the same processor family (such as 64-bit extensions and SSE3). VMware identifies these exceptions if it cannot guarantee successful migration with vMotion. vCenter Server provides features that help ensure that virtual machines migrated with vMotion meet processor compatibility requirements. These features include:

 Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) You can use EVC to help ensure vMotion compatibility for the hosts in a cluster. EVC ensures that all hosts in a cluster present the same CPU feature set to virtual machines, even if the actual CPUs on the hosts differ. This prevents migrations with vMotion from failing due to incompatible CPUs. Configure EVC from the Cluster Settings dialog box. The hosts in a cluster must meet certain requirements for the cluster to use EVC. For information about EVC and EVC requirements, see the vCenter Server and Host Management documentation. CPU compatibility masks vCenter Server compares the CPU features available to a virtual machine with the CPU features of the destination host to determine whether to allow or disallow migrations with vMotion. By applying CPU compatibility masks to individual virtual machines, you can hide certain CPU features from the virtual machine and potentially prevent migrations with vMotion from failing due to incompatible CPUs. vMotion Requirements for DRS Clusters A DRS cluster has certain vMotion requirements. To enable the use of DRS migration recommendations, the hosts in your cluster must be part of a vMotion network. If the hosts are not in the vMotion network, DRS can still make initial placement recommendations. To be configured for vMotion, each host in the cluster must meet the following requirements: vMotion does not support raw disks or migration of applications clustered using Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS). vMotion requires a private Gigabit Ethernet migration network between all of the vMotion enabled managed hosts. When vMotion is enabled on a managed host, configure a unique network identity object for the managed host and connect it to the private migration network. VLAN Configuration Virtual LANs (VLANs) enable a single physical LAN segment to be further segmented so that groups of ports are isolated from one another as if they were on physically different segments. Configuring ESXi with VLANs is recommended for the following reasons. 1) 1) It integrates the host into a pre-existing environment. 2) 2) It secures network traffic. 3) 3) It reduces network traffic congestion. 4) 4) iSCSI traffic requires an isolated network.

You can configure VLANs in ESXi using three methods: External Switch Tagging (EST), Virtual Switch Tagging (VST), and Virtual Guest Tagging (VGT). With EST, all VLAN tagging of packets is performed on the physical switch. Host network adapters are connected to access ports on the physical switch. Port groups that are connected to the virtual switch must have their VLAN ID set to 0. With VST, all VLAN tagging of packets is performed by the virtual switch before leaving the host. Host network adapters must be connected to trunk ports on the physical switch. Port groups that are connected to the virtual switch must have an appropriate VLAN ID specified. With VGT, all VLAN tagging is performed by the virtual machine. VLAN tags are preserved between the virtual machine networking stack and external switch when frames are passed to and from virtual switches. Physical switch ports are set to trunk port. Note When using VGT, you must have an 802.1Q VLAN trucking driver installed on the virtual machine. What Is a Virtual Machine? A virtual machine is a software computer that, like a physical computer, runs an operating system and applications. The virtual machine is comprised of a set of specification and configuration files and is backed by the physical resources of a host. Every virtual machine has virtual devices that provide the same functionality as physical hardware and have additional benefits in terms of portability, manageability, and security. Virtual Machine Files File .vmx Usage vmname.vmx Description Virtual machine configuration file .vmxf vmname.vmxf Additional virtual machine configuration files

.vmdk flat.vm dk .nvram

vmname.vmdk vmname-flat.vmdk

Virtual disk characteristics Preallocated virtual disk

vmname.nvram or nvram

Virtual machine BIOS or EFI configuration

.vmsd .vmsn

vmname.vmsd vmname.vmsn

Virtual machine snapshots Virtual machine snapshot data file

.vswp .vmss .log

vmname.vswp vmname.vmss vmware.log

Virtual machine swap file Virtual machine suspend file Current virtual machine log file

-#.log

vmware-#.log (where # is a number starting with 1)

Old virtual machine log entries