Many users have difficulties with understanding how the traffic flows during vMotion, storage vMotion, virtual machine clone, P2V or V2V. I decided to explain and to put on pictures, which part of infrastructure is used during such activities.
Today I’m focusing on storage activities such as Storage vMotion and clone
Scenario 1: Storage vMotion between datastores which are on the same storage box ( in example I have FC storage Active/Active)
Let’s assume that virtual machine run on ESX1 and VMFS1 datastore and administrator has to move it on VMFS2 datastore. During storage vMotion between datastores (VMFS1 and VMFS2) within the same storage (Storage1) whole traffic go through to FC connection (in RED) only one host (ESX1) utilizing HBA0 and HBA1 FC adapters. Network (vmnic0 and vmnic1) is not use during storage vMotion
storage vMotion within the same storage box
Scenario 2: Storage vMotion between datastores which are on different storage boxes ( in example I have FC storage Active/Active)
Let’s assume that virtual machine run on ESX1 and VMFS1 datastore (Storage1) and administrator has to move VM on VMFS4 datastore (Storage2). During storage vMotion between datastores (VMFS1 and VMFS4) which are in different storage boxes (Storage1 and Storage2) whole traffic go through to FC connection (in RED) only one host (ESX1) utilizing HBA0 and HBA1 FC adapters. Network is not use during storage vMotion. So, it the same situation like in Scenario 1.
storage vMotion between datastores on different storage boxes
[box type=”info”] How the traffic flows ? Part 2 – storage vMotion with VAAI[/box]
