Shared-Nothing Live Migration arriving with vSphere 5.1, to be unveiled at VMworld 2012 the week of August 26th
Like many of you, I've been eagerly awaiting the release of vSphere/ESXi 5.1 for a variety of reasons. I've also adjusted my VMworld 2012 schedule accordingly, to be sure to confirm sessions VSP1549 AND BCO1757 mentioned at VMware vSphere 5.1 to include shared-nothing live migration. So glad I'll be seeing UK blogger Mike of [Mike Laverick's RTFM Education]( http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk), having missed Maine's New England VMUG Summer Slammer recently (a scheduling conflict).
What is Shared Nothing Live Migration?
(available in Hyper-V 3.0, demonstrated here)?
It's the ability to move a virtual machine from one host to another, while running, without the need for the origin and destination servers to share common storage...the hosts need to share nothing but a simple Ethernet connection to each other (source).
What does this mean to the home lab builder?
Well, the requirement for a pricey shared data store, outlined in articles such as Eric Siebert's The why and how of building a vSphere lab for work or home, becomes less of a concern. A storage server that you build with its own internal SSD-cached datastores such as my vZilla, will now be able to seamlessly move live running VMs, just like with Storage vMotion, even to other completely separate systems in my lab. Even if the only thing in common is the network connection. Of course, it'll take a while to move possibly gigabytes or even terabytes of data over gigabit ethernet, but still, the convenience of point-and-click moves of VMs at will will be quite appealing, no manual cloning or command line knowledge required.
This could help reduce the appeal of purchasing shared datastores from the likes of Qnap, Iomega, Synology, NetGear and Drobo for home labbers, where cost is the primary concern. Looking forward to giving these new capabilities a shot, and comparing with Hyper-V 3.0 Shared Nothing Live Migration (source). See also VMware vSphere 5.1 details trickle out and/or Migrating RDMs, and a question for RDM Users.
