vMotion and storage vMotion question

[warquezho0612]

I have everything setup, UCS 5108, ESXi host, VMs, I just don't have a SAN connection yet... My question is can I enable vMotion? Let's say I have a cluster in vCenter, within that cluster I attached two ESXi host, win2008 VM in on one ESXi and running, can I migrate (using vMotion) that win2008 VM to another ESXi without SAN connection?

How about storage vMotion from one ESXi host hardrive to another ESXi host hardrive? Is this possible?

Note: I don't have SAN connection in this setup

[zsafawi · Accepted solution]

One of the requirements for vMotion is shared storage that would allow visibility between source and destination ESXi hosts. (SAN, iSCSI or NFS).

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r41/vsp_41_dc_admin_guide.pdf

pages 210 - 215

You can use OpenFiler as an iSCSI SAN for lab testing

http://www.openfiler.com/community/download/

Thanks,

Zouheir

[warquezho0612]

So in other words, I cannot implement vMotion unless I have a shared storage like SAN?

How about that OpenFiler? Can it be used as a replacement for SAN to have a shared storage and implement vMotion?

[cpaggen · Accepted solution]

Any type of shared storage supported by VMware will do fine. It doesn't have to be a Fibre Channel SAN. You can use an open-source NFS filer or an iSCSI repository as alternatives.

[warquezho0612]

So unless I can come up with a shared storage between my two blades (ESXi Host) in 5108 Chassis, then I cannot use vMotion functionality? Correct?

[Robert Burns · Accepted solution]

Correct.  Shared storage is the primary requirement for Vmotion.  This requirement is Vmware-specific, not Cisco.

Regards,

Robert