Last Updated on August 2, 2021 by Admin 2
You want to migrate a VMware VM and its datastore from one ESXi server to another ESXi server. You do not want to power off the VM to perform the migration.
Which of the following solutions should you choose?
- copying or cloning
- cold migration
- Storage vMotion
- vSphere vMotion
Of the available choices, you should choose Storage vMotion if you want to migrate a VMware virtual machine (VM) and its datastore from one VMware ESXi server to another ESXi server without powering off the VM. VMware’s ESXi server is a bare-metal server virtualization technology, which means that ESXi is installed directly on the hardware it is virtualizing instead of running on top of another operating system (OS). This layer of hardware abstraction enables tools like Storage vMotion to migrate ESXi VMs and their datastores from one host to another without powering off the VM, enabling the VM’s users to continue working without interruption.
You should not choose vSphere vMotion to perform the migration in this scenario, because vMotion allows migration of only the VM and its virtual components; it does not allow migration of the datastore. The datastore is the repository of VM-related files, such as logs and virtual disks. When migrating a VM by using vMotion, only the virtualized environment moves to a new host, not the datastore.
You should not choose cold migration, copying, or cloning in this scenario. Cold migration is the process of powering down a VM and moving the VM or the VM and its datastore to a new location. While a cold migration is in progress, no users can perform tasks inside the VM. Both copying and cloning create new instances of a given VM. Therefore, neither action is a form of migrating a VM to another host. Typically, a VM must be powered off or suspended in order to successfully copy or clone it.