vmotion – Page 2

vMotion across different VDS version between onPrem and VMC

09.19.2018 by William Lam // 21 Comments

For those of you who have attempted a vMotion (whether that is within a vCenter Server or between different vCenter Servers (including across SSO Domains), if the VM is running on a Distributed Virtual Switch (VDS) and the version of the VDS is not the same between the source and destination (VDS 6.5 to VDS 6.7), the operation will fail with the following error message (UI and API):

Currently connected network interface 'Network adapter 1' cannot use network 'DVPG-VM-Network (VDS-67)', because the destination distributed switch has a different version or vendor than the source distributed switch.

This behavior is no different on VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) or at least, I thought it was, until I recently learned about a really neat feature that was introduced in the VMC 1.4p2 release, here is a snippet from the release notes:

Cross VDS version vMotion Compatibility
With this advanced configuration option enabled, bi-directional vMotion between on-premises and VMware Cloud on AWS can be achieved across different virtual distributed switch (VDS) versions (greater than or equal to version 6.0). This must be enabled on the on-premises vCenter.

It turns out there is actually a way to allow vMotions across different VDS versions, this is important for VMC because the software stack will always be using a newer version than what we ship to our onPrem customers. However, due to this limitation, we could not benefit from the latest VDS version but had to default it to VDS 6.0 to ensure that customers could migrate their workloads. The advanced setting mentioned in the release notes allows us to disable the strict compatibility check which is performed on the destination vCenter Server when a vMotion is initiated, this setting is now enabled by default on the VMC vCenter Server which is why you can perform migration across different VDS without having to do anything special on your onPrem vCenter Server.

UPDATE (11/07/21) - Thanks to Robert Cranedonk, it looks like you can now also vMotion across different NSX-T Logical Switches by adding vCenter advanced setting called config.vpxd.network.allowVmotionBetweenLogicalSwitches and set the value to true.

UPDATE (01/02/21) - If you are running vSphere 7.x, an additional advanced setting must be configured called config.vmprov.enableHybridMode and set the value to true. For more details, you can refer to this VMware KB 79446. Thanks to reader Marc Alumbaugh for sharing this finding!

UPDATE (10/16/18) - With the release of vSphere 6.7 Update 1, customers can now also vMotion VMs from on-prem running on a VDS to VMC with NSX-T N-VDS.

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Bulk VM Migration using new Cross vCenter vMotion Utility Fling

12.20.2017 by William Lam // 60 Comments

Over the last few years, I have spoken to a number of customers who have greatly benefited from the ability to live migrate Virtual Machines across different vCenter Servers that are NOT part of the same vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO) Domain, which I had first shared back in 2015 here and here. This extended capability of the Cross vCenter vMotion feature enabled customers to solve new use cases that were challenging, especially for scenarios such as Datacenter migration, consolidation or even migrating existing workloads from their current environment into new SDDC deployments such as VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) as an example.

Although customers could initiate Cross vCenter vMotions using the vSphere API which included PowerCLI (Move-VM cmdlet was enhanced in 6.5, more details here), the overall experience was still not as friendly. This was especially true for customers who may only have a small number of VMs to migrate and prefer a UI-based interface rather than an API/CLI only option. In addition, for large number of VM migrations, there was not an easy way to perform "batch" VM migrations that was easily consumable for folks who may not have a strong background in Automation or the vSphere APIs.

Today, I am pleased to share a new VMware Fling called the Cross vCenter Migration Utility that will help simplify the consumption of initiating VM migration(s) across different vCenter Servers, especially between dispart SSO Domains where a graphical interface was not available. This solution was developed out of our VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Engineering group which is part of the Integrated Systems Business Unit at VMware. I had spoken to a number of folks within the group about the extended Cross vCenter vMotion capability and I was super excited when I heard they were planning to release this tool as a Fling and make it available to all customers. I was fortunately to have been involved in the project alongside the Engineering lead Vishal Gupta and we are excited that we can finally talk about this project and see how customers will be using this new tool.

UPDATE (05/07/18) - The Fling has just been updated to 2.0 with the following new features:

Added support to select individual host as the placement target
Added support for migrating VMs with shared datastore
Added clone functionality in addition to relocate
Added resource summary details for placement targets
Added a prompt to verify site thumbprint during SSL verification
Added a link to refresh vm list in the inventory view
Updated REST APIs to add operation type parameter

Cross vCenter Migration Utility Fling

Cross vCenter vMotion Requirements: KB 2106952

Download Fling here

Features

Completely UI-driven workflow for VM migration
Provides REST API for managing migration operations
Works with vCenter not part of the same SSO domain
Supports both live/cold migration of VMs
Batch migration of multiple VMs in parallel
Flexible network mappings b/w source and destination sites

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Did you know of an additional cool vMotion capability in vSphere 6.0?

02.19.2015 by William Lam // 59 Comments

There was an excellent blog post from Duncan a couple of weeks back going over the new vMotion capabilities in vSphere 6.0 which includes: Cross vSwitch vMotion, Cross vCenter vMotion (xVC-vMotion) and Long Distance vMotion (LD-vMotion). If you have not checked out his article, I highly recommend you give it a read before proceeding further. After reading through Duncan's article, I noticed he had missed out on one additional vMotion capability which might not be obvious as the option is no where to be found in the vSphere Web Client UI. In fact, I was only aware of this additional capability after hearing about it from Engineering during the development of vSphere 6.

The additional vMotion capability actually extends the Cross vCenter Server vMotion (xVC-vMotion) workflow which allows an administrator to live migrate a running virtual machine between two vCenter Servers that are part of the same SSO Domain. By virtue of being in the same SSO Domain using the new Enhanced Linked Mode feature, both vCenter Servers will be visible in the vSphere Web Client and will be available to be selected either as a source or destination for a vMotion operation.

This extended Cross vCenter Server vMotion capability (unofficially I am calling it ExVC-vMotion) allows an administrator to live migrate a running virtual machine between two vCenter Servers which are NOT part of the same SSO Domain. How cool is that!? In my opinion, this is actually a pretty big deal because I think it truly removes any boundaries for a vSphere virtual machine and will open up an entire new class of mobility use cases that were never thought possible before. This will definitely make it interesting for customers who wish to migrate workloads from their on-premises datacenter into a completely different vSphere environment or even one that is hosted by a service provider or maybe even vCloud Air?

The ExVC-vMotion operation is currently only available today using the vSphere API, not because it is a private API but because there is no UI wizard for this operation. The reason the current xVC-vMotion is so seamless today is that both your source and destination vCenter Server is visible by being part of the same SSO Domain. If you have two completely different vCenter Servers which are not joined to the same SSO Domain or have completely different SSO Domains, then you will need to use the vSphere API to perform this operation.

All vMotion operations including vMotion without shared storage uses the vSphere API RelocateVM_Task() method. In vSphere 6.0, the method has been enhanced to accept a new property called ServiceLocator which provides a service endpoint to a vCenter Server where a VM can be migrated to. One important thing to note is that if you wish to migrate a VM between two vCenter Servers located in the same SSO Domain, there is an sslThumbprint property that is not required to be set. However, if the two vCenter Servers are NOT part of the same SSO Domain, then you need to set that property. In addition, if the VM is migrated to a different vCenter Server, additional properties such as the ESXi host, vSphere Cluster/Resource Pool and Datastore must be specified as part of the migration spec.

UPDATE (05/25/16) - I have re-factored and simplified my xVC-vMotion script which supports additional capabilities. Please have a look at the blog post here for more details.

To demonstrate this awesome ExVC-vMotion operation, I have created a simple PowerCLI script called run-cool-ExVC-vMotion.ps1 which accepts 12 command-line parameters which are described in more detail below:

Variable	Description
sourceVC	The hostname or IP Address of the source vCenter Server
sourceVCUsername	The username to connect to source vCenter Server
sourceVCPassword	The password to connect to source vCenter Server
destVC	The hostname or IP Address of the destination vCenter Server
destVCUsername	The username to connect to the destination vCenter Server
destVCPassword	The password to connect to the destination vCenter Server
destVCThumbprint	The SSL Thumbprint (SHA1) of the destination vCenter Server (can be retrieved using either this or this)
datastorename	The destination vSphere Datastore where the VM will be migrated to
clustername	The destination vSphere Cluster where the VM will be migrated to
vmhostname	The destination vSphere ESXi host where the VM will be migrated to
vmnetworkname	The destination vSphere VM Portgroup where the VM will be migrated to
vmname	The name of the source VM to be migrated

In my lab environment, I have configured two vCenter Server's which are part of two different SSO Domains as seen in the screenshot below:

I have tiny Linux VM (vMA) that I am using which I will be migrating from vcenter60-4 to vcenter60-5 which has a completely different datastore and VM portgroup (if you have stretched/extended L2, then the VM would stay online during this migration). I then execute the script using the following parameters based on my own environment and we can see the migration is kicking off:

.\run-cool-ExVC-vMotion.ps1 vcenter60-4.primp-industries.com *protected email* VMware1! vcenter60-5.primp-industries.com *protected email* VMware1! 82:D0:CF:B5:CC:EA:FE:AE:03:BE:E9:4B:AC:A2:B0:AB:2F:E3:87:49 vesxi60-8-local-storage NY-Cluster vesxi60-8.primp-industries.com NY-VM-Network vMA

One the migration has completed, if we now take a look at our vSphere Web Client, we can see the VM has now been migrated to the other vCenter Server.

I really hope to see the vSphere Web Client get enhanced to support this cool vMotion capability, but in the mean time you can easily perform this operation using the above PowerCLI script or any other scripting/programming language calling into the vSphere API. Set your VM free and let it migrate where your heart desires 🙂