Splitting VMDK's up

MasterPlan1 · 7 Oct 2011 at 09:58

Hi, just a quick check before I do it - but if I were to do a browse of a datastore, then right click "Move to" on a VMDK the machine would be alright with that?

Just I've got several machines with large storage drives which I'd ideally like to move onto slower low cost storage to free up the fast SAS space, and for some reason unbeknown to me, some servers (prod) were actually built on slow disks.. So I want to at least move their system VMDK onto the faster storage. Would this pose any issue with the VM\windows install functioning?

TIA

-Rich

ecksmen · 8 Oct 2011 at 23:49

No, well sort of. What you describe is correct, you can move vmdk files about but not in this method while the virtual machine is running, you will also need to update the config file to the new location.

What you want is storage vmotion and its not free which does it all for you while the VM is powered on.

If uptime is important could you do a lun migration instead?

MasterPlan1 · 8 Oct 2011 at 23:54

I remember there was a ghetto storage vmotion, I'll dig that up - not sure if it works with 4 but it worked with 3.5.

I guess if I just move the system vmdk and then if I just drop the storage vmdk and move that, reattach it, it should be fine I guess.

The main machine which I need to do it on is the SCCM machine, so essentially the infrastructure's server, so downtime isn't all that important.

chrislip · 9 Oct 2011 at 20:38

That would work, but you will need to have the machine powered off to move the vmdk unless as ecksmen says you have storage vmotion. Once the disk is moved you would need to edit the properties of the moved disk to point to the new LUN. I have moved numerous servers this way and never had any issues, although I would suggest copying the vmdk and powering up to make sure everything is as it should be before removing the original vmdk file