6.0.1

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You can migrate virtual machines with USB devices that are connected to a physical USB device on the
host. You must enable the devices for vMotion.
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You cannot use migration with vMotion to migrate a virtual machine that uses a virtual device backed
by a device that is not accessible on the destination host. For example, you cannot migrate a virtual
machine with a CD drive backed by the physical CD drive on the source host. Disconnect these devices
before you migrate the virtual machine.
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You cannot use migration with vMotion to migrate a virtual machine that uses a virtual device backed
by a device on the client computer. Disconnect these devices before you migrate the virtual machine.
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You can migrate virtual machines that uses Flash Read Cache if the destination host also provides Flash
Read Cache. During the migration, you can select whether to migrate the virtual machine cache or drop
it, for example, when the cache size is large.
Swap File Location Compatibility
Virtual machine swap le location aects vMotion compatibility in dierent ways depending on the version
of ESXi running on the virtual machine's host.
You can congure ESX 3.5 or ESXi 3.5 or later hosts to store virtual machine swap les with the virtual
machine conguration le, or on a local swap le datastore specied for that host.
The location of the virtual machine swap le aects vMotion compatibility as follows:
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For migrations between hosts running ESX/ESXi version 3.5 and later, vMotion and migrations of
suspended and powered-o virtual machines are allowed.
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During a migration with vMotion, if the swaple location specied on the destination host diers from
the swaple location specied on the source host, the swap le is copied to the new location. This
activity can result in slower migrations with vMotion. If the destination host cannot access the specied
swap le location, it stores the swap le with the virtual machine conguration le.
See the vSphere Resource Management documentation for information about conguring swap le policies.
Migration with vMotion in Environments Without Shared Storage
You can use vMotion to migrate virtual machines to a dierent compute resource and storage
simultaneously. In addition, unlike Storage vMotion, which requires a single host to have access to both the
source and destination datastore, you can migrate virtual machines across storage accessibility boundaries.
vMotion does not require environments with shared storage. This is useful for performing cross-cluster
migrations, when the target cluster machines might not have access to the source cluster's storage. Processes
that are working on the virtual machine continue to run during the migration with vMotion.
You can use vMotion to migrate virtual machines across vCenter Server intances.
You can place the virtual machine and all of its disks in a single location or select separate locations for the
virtual machine conguration le and each virtual disk. In addition, you can change virtual disks from
thick-provisioned to thin-provisioned or from thin-provisioned to thick-provisioned. For virtual
compatibility mode RDMs, you can migrate the mapping le or convert from RDM to VMDK.
vMotion without shared storage is useful for virtual infrastructure administration tasks similar to vMotion
with shared storage or Storage vMotion tasks.
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Host maintenance. You can move virtual machines o of a host to allow maintenance of the host.
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Storage maintenance and reconguration. You can move virtual machines o of a storage device to
allow maintenance or reconguration of the storage device without virtual machine downtime.
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Storage load redistribution. You can manually redistribute virtual machines or virtual disks to dierent
storage volumes to balance capacity or improve performance.
vCenter Server and Host Management
124 VMware, Inc.