Moving VM's - the hard way

On the cresskill ESXi Host, the VM's Red-Bank (SQL Server 2005), Trenton (Win2k3 AD), and Uber (Ubuntu Linux shared storage) all need to migrate to the Towers1 cluster, preferably onto northvale ESXi Host, where alpine VM (vCenter 4.1) resides.

In other environments, the movement of VM's from one host to another would be relatively trivial, as vMotion and Storage vMotion would be the standard solution. However, since cresskill, the utility ESXi host, does not have a supported CPU (no VT) to join the Towers1 cluster and be available for these VMware functions, the live migration features will not work.

The other caveat is a catch-22. Some of the VM's that need to be moved are active participants in vSphere or Active Directory and can not be brought down, even for cold migration, without bringing down those services while the move happens.

The solution to this challenge is cloning. Cloning VM's creates a mirrored snapshot of the original live VM files, in a location of your choosing, and creates a new VM object pointing at the new files.

To that end, VM's Trenton and red-bank were cloned (Trenton2; red-bank2) into the Towers1 cluster, the original VM's were shut down and the new clones were brought up. For red-bank2, vCenter Server 4.1 service was stopped before the switch, since its database is on red-bank. Trenton2's AD was more forgiving, allowing for the absence of directory services while the switch was made.

Due to the size of Uber VM's shared storage (close to 250 GB), this clone will run over night, even on the Gig-e.