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Considerations for migrating or cloning virtual machines

Contributors netapp-asubhas
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You should be aware of some of the considerations while migrating exisitng virtual machines in your datacenter.

Migrate protected virtual machines

You can migrate the protected virtual machines to:

  • Same vVols datastore in a different ESXi host

  • Different compatible vVols datastore in same ESXi host

  • Different compatible vVols datastore in a different ESXi host

If virtual machine is migrated to different FlexVol volume, then respective metadata file also gets updated with the virtual machine information. If a virtual machine is migrated to a different ESXi host but same storage then underlying FlexVol volume metadafile will not be modified.

Clone protected virtual machines

You can clone protected virtual machines to the following:

  • Same container of same FlexVol volume using replication group

    Same FlexVol volume's metadata file is updated with the cloned virtual machine details.

  • Same container of a different FlexVol volume using replication group

    The FlexVol volume where the cloned virtual machine is placed, the metadata file gets updated with the cloned virtual machine details.

  • Different container or vVols datastore

    The FlexVol volume where the cloned virtual machine is placed, the metadata file gets updated virtual machine details.

VMware presently does not support virtual machine cloned to a VM template.

Clone-of-Clone of a protected virtual machine is supported.

Virtual Machine snapshots

Presently only virtual machine Snapshots without memory are supported. If virtual machine has Snapshot with memory, then the virtual machine is not considered for protection.

You also cannot protect unprotected virtual machine that has memory Snapshot. For this release, you are expected to delete memory snapshot before enabling protection for the virtual machine.