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vMotion and Sites and Clusters

I understand thing correctly a cluster is a logical boundary for vMotion of any type but my question is can you vmotion between different sites or datacenter's . If so is this what they consider a stretched cluster?

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

Yes, you can, and read Andy's "noddy" understanding.....

I like to think of a "stretched cluster" as a piece of elastic attached to one of your ESXi hosts, and you pull that ESXi host from Site A to Site B. (and when you pull it, to Site B, all the links attached to ESXi Host 2, are also stretched to Site B). Not uncommon for Site B, to have completely different networking, so there would have to be IP Address changes, and routing between Site A and Site B etc

So you end up with

ESXi Host 1 - Site A
ESXi Host 2 - Site B

Site B is still managed by the same vCenter Server, and it's managing two Sites (Site 1 and Site 2, and two Datacenters).

This makes vMotion and Storage vMotion possible, providing that the networking requirements are correct, same network (VLAN) (you've stretched you LAN or VLAN there as well), and storage can be accessed from both Site 1 and Site 2.

Networking, must be layer 2, and less than 5ms latency, and is generally, less than 100kn away, but it depends on how good your LAN/WAN link between the sites.

compdigit44

ASKER

Thanks can you send me a link to Andy's article you referenced. Also how does vMotion work between sites with different IP scheme's

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

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compdigit44

ASKER

Awesome feedback as always!!! I found the link you referenced very interesting..

It's true, when it comes down to it, it's all connected via TCP/IP

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

Thanks for your kind words.