6.5.1

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You can migrate virtual machines that have 3D graphics enabled. If the 3D Renderer is set to Automatic,
virtual machines use the graphics renderer that is present on the destination host. The renderer can be
the host CPU or a GPU graphics card. To migrate virtual machines with the 3D Renderer set to
Hardware, the destination host must have a GPU graphics card.
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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 use 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 ESXi 5.5 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 ESXi 5.5 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 on the destination host diers from the swap
le location 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. 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 instances.
You can place the virtual machine and all 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 a host to allow maintenance of the host.
Chapter 11 Migrating Virtual Machines
VMware, Inc. 121