Explaining the Migration Options in VMM

As you may be aware of, there are several migration options in VMM. Which one you should use depends on what you are trying to address.

Migration Options

·         Network Migration

·         Live Migration

·         Cluster Migration

·         SAN Migration

·         Storage Migration

To initiate the magic, right click your VM and select either Migrate Storage or Migrate Virtual Machine.

Network Migration

When you are planning to move a VM from a Hyper-V server to another Hyper-V server and those servers are not in a Hyper-V Cluster, or you want to move a VM from local storage/LUN over to a CSV on a Hyper-V Cluster, VMM will perform a Network Migration. You can think of this option as the same as Export/Import in Hyper-V Manager.

Live Migration

This is the preferred migration option since it does not include any downtime for your VMs

when your VMs are located on a CSV in a Hyper-V Cluster. The details are explained here.

Cluster Migration

This option is available when a VM runs on a LUN that is not configured as a CSV in a Hyper-V Cluster. The process will transfer the LUN to another node in that Cluster. Be careful and make sure that no other VMs runs on the same LUN, since they will also be transferred. (downtime)

SAN Migration

Same as above, if you have one VM per LUN, the LUN will be presented for another Hyper-V server. This migration option is very fast but has some requirements. The following types of SAN`s support SAN Migration:

·         Fibre Channel SAN

·         N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) Fibre Channel

·         iSCSI SAN via Microsoft Initiator

If you are planning for FC and iSCSI SAN via iSCSI initiator, you will have to use Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator – available as a Feature in Windows Server 2008 R2.

NPIV uses HBA which creates virtual HBA ports with a logical reference to the underlying physical port.
SAN Migration can be used to store VMs from a hypervisor in Library, rapid provisioning, deployment of VMs from Library to a hypervisor, and migrations between servers.
(Both SMI-S and VDS SAN`s support this feature in VMM 2012).

Storage Migration

Move the physical files for a VM on the same server, from one location to another. You can do this without – or with minimal downtime. If the VM has multiple VHD`s associated, then you will be able to specify a new location for every file.

Happy migration and good luck.