VMware VMotion enables the live migration of running virtual machines from one physical server to another with zero downtime.
VMotion lets you :
* Automatically optimize and allocate entire pools of resources for maximum hardware utilization and
* Perform hardware maintenance without any scheduled downtime.
* Proactively migrate virtual machines away from failing or underperforming servers.
Below are the pre-requisites for configuring vMotion :
* Each host must be correctly licensed for vMotion
* Each host must meet shared storage requirements
* vMotion migrates the VM from one host to another which is only possible with both the host are sharing common storage or to any storage accessible by both the source and target hosts.
* A shared storage can be on a Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN) or can be implemented using iSCSI SAN and NAS.
* If you use vMotion to migrate virtual machines with raw device mapping (RDM) files, make sure to maintain consistent LUN IDs for RDMs across all participating hosts.
* Each host must meet the networking requirements
* Configure a VMkernel port on each host.
* Dedicate at least one GigE adapter for vMotion.
* Use at least one 10 GigE adapters if you migrate workloads that have many memory operations.
* Use jumbo frames for best vMotion performance.
* Ensure that jumbo frames are enabled on all network devices that are on the vMotion path including physical NICs, physical switches, and virtual switches.
