Migrate VMs between hosts and/or datastores

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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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Hello,

we are looking for a solution that will enable us to migrate VMs on a Vmware esx 4.1 AMD cluster to a Vmware esx 5 Intel cluster with as minimum downtime as possible.

We are aware that this migration should contain a "cold" migration step due to processor architecture differences and there should be an offline period for VMs to start on the new architecture.

However we want to learn if Acronis has a solution regarding to this issue. Does Acronis has a product that will enable us to migrate a VM from one cluster to an alternate cluster with a minimum downtime.

Please kindly let us know if more clarification is needed regarding to the topic.

thank you for your helps in advance and looking forward hearing from you soon,

Regards,

Wed, 11/28/2012 - 12:05
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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
Beginner
Posts: 1
Comments: 21

I'll assume you currently have local datastores, as a SAN wouldn't need this.

You will setup a replication job to mirror the VM from a local datastore on a 4.1 server to a datastore on a 5.0 server (turn off auto vMotion if you use that). Once the replication finishes, and as long as CBT is turned on, you should be able to run the job multiple times to shrink the amount of data and thus the time it takes to mirror the server over. Once you schedule an outage, turn off the server on the 4.1 side, one last run of the replication job, then power up the server on the 5.0 side.

Note - before you can use Acronis to backup the VM on the 5.0 side, you'll need to de-Acronis the replica. Check out http://forum.acronis.com/forum/34980

You'll need to delete:
1) test_meta.info file
2) acronis.replicationxxxxx tags in .vmx configuration file
3) The annotation of the VM (in the Summary tab)
from the info on the 5.0 cluster

Thu, 12/06/2012 - 21:21