VMTN Blog

Mike DiPetrillo (who was on our podcast this morning - link to come) had a nice post this morning that showed off the power of the VMware platform, the VI Toolkit (for Windows), and came up with a very useful script for folks that need to move VMs and don't have VMotion. I'll let him tell the story: Quick Migration for VMware - The Power of PowerShell.

I thought I'd try to create something with the script and show it off during my talk at VMworld on Deploying VMware in a Microsoft Shop. The question is what do I create? Well, there has been some great debate of Microsoft's Quick Migration and VMware's VMotion and are they equal or not, do they solve the same problems, etc. ... One of the things that was also brought up over and over again in the debate was the fact that Quick Migration was free and came with Hyper-V since it was based on Microsoft Clustering whereas VMware VMotion was only available in the most expensive Enterprise SKU of VMware Infrastructure. So there it was - I need to create Quick Migration for the lower priced and free VMware solutions. I went off, built my little script, and showed it off at VMworld. There was a GREAT response to it ...

The script works just like Microsoft Quick Migration - the virtual disk is stored on shared storage, the VM is suspended to disk, and the VM is then resumed on the destination. Presto!

Interesting to me as a blog watcher is that the virtualization blogosphere's antennae all started twitching as they recognized a Very Cool Idea. (I'll also be interested to see how the guys on the podcast this morning spread the news to VMware Communities -- because part of my job is to get the word out about stuff like this. How to do that best in all the highways and byways of the Internets, including our own Communities?)

Rich Brambley talks about the need for shared storage and VirtualCenter Quick Migration PowerShell script for VMware VI Foundation | VM /ETC.

Tools like this are one reason why Bob Plankers recommends skipping VMware Server and going straight to ESXi.  Solutions to Match Your Problems : Bob Plankers, The Lone Sysadmin.

One of the big things I like about virtualization is that you can find or build solutions that match the size of the problem you have. Need live workload migration? Buy VMotion. Need dynamic load balancing? Buy DRS. But if you only need to move your workloads around once in a while maybe you can get by with something like Mike DiPetrillo’s quick migration script. Cheap, easy, right-sized, and it has a well-known path for growth when you decide you really do need VMotion or DRS.

Duncan Epping (VMware Quick Migration » Yellow Bricks) and Eric Sloof (A poor men’s VMotion - NTPRO.NL) also were on point.

I'll finish with Carter Shanklin from the Toolkit team Migrating VMs without VMware VMotion.. Carter also notes that we could tweak this so that you don't need VirtualCenter.

Mike has quite a lot of industry experience and has done a lot of custom development like this before. However, until recently Mike had never seen the PowerShell or the VI Toolkit at all, yet he still was able to put this script together in the span of roughly a weekend. So I'm not trying to imply that Mike's not a smart guy but there's no question in my mind that the simplicity of the VI Toolkit made it possible for this really interesting script to get developed in record time.

With the power of the SDK and the VI Toolkit (for Windows) showing that you can build this kind of thing easily, and the announcement of the VirtualCenter Server and VI Client both becoming cross-platform and full of LInuxy goodness, this is going to be a damn fun year if you are a creative developer or sysadmin.