CnicNV
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VMWare Migration VS Cloning a VM? Which is faster?
I was manually migrating a VM in vcenter from one modern host to another and it was blazing fast, at around 800Mb/s. I tried to clone another VM in the opposite direction, but between the two same hosts and it was much slower at around 200Mb/s.
So I am wondering, is cloning for some reason slower the migrating? And if so, note that the only reason I chose to clone was I was worried that I may need to cancel the process before it had completed. So my second question is, can a manual migration be canceled part of the way through the process without messing up the VM at its original location? IE, at what point during the migration does it delete the machine from its original destination? I am worried that a cancel migration will leave two botched VM fragments on 2 hosts, with both of them being somehow incomplete and unusable.
Note, I needed the option to cancel the process and the the second VM needed to be backup in within 1.5 hours, and if not, I had to be able to back out of it.
Thanks.
So I am wondering, is cloning for some reason slower the migrating? And if so, note that the only reason I chose to clone was I was worried that I may need to cancel the process before it had completed. So my second question is, can a manual migration be canceled part of the way through the process without messing up the VM at its original location? IE, at what point during the migration does it delete the machine from its original destination? I am worried that a cancel migration will leave two botched VM fragments on 2 hosts, with both of them being somehow incomplete and unusable.
Note, I needed the option to cancel the process and the the second VM needed to be backup in within 1.5 hours, and if not, I had to be able to back out of it.
Thanks.
ASKER
The two hosts do not share the same data store via a SAN or anything like that, rather the the VM exist locally on the hosts locally hard drives.
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The only fast stuff is cloning a VM on datastore that supports VAAI.
Rest reads all data to ESXi and writes to new place.
Rest reads all data to ESXi and writes to new place.
ASKER
Perfect and detailed answer, yes, now that you mention it, "machine 2" has a higher grade PERC controller where as the other does not, so that's probably the difference.
Thanks again.
Thanks again.
There is no VAAI support in your setup. So no fast fast clone.
As load reduces on old array the last machines will go out faster. So start with small disks, then go to big ones...
As load reduces on old array the last machines will go out faster. So start with small disks, then go to big ones...
2nd case, cloning, its same host or different host a COPY of virtual hard drive is made and hence it takes time. The speed of clone depends on storage, LUN, network.
Cloning will not make changed to original VM and cloning process does NOT delete the original VM.