Moving VMs between Zettagrid Availability Zones

Owned by Tahir Kulelija
Last updated: 03 Dec 2020
2 min read

A common question we get asked is ?How can I move a VM from one Zettagrid availability zone to another??, for example, from the Sydney zone to the Melbourne zone. The answer is relatively simple in vCloud with a little know how.

There are two ways to achieve an inter-zone VM transfer: by moving a single VM or a whole vApp containing multiple VMs. If you wish to move a single VM, you first need to copy it to it?s own vApp before moving to the target zone.

Preparation:

  • Bandwidth

Moving VMs between zones will count toward the quota of both gateway devices. VMs larger than 100GB are not always feasible to move and may require consultation with one of our virtualization engineers.

  • Storage

You will need enough storage in your vDC to work with these templates, so ensure you check the sizes of the VMs to be worked on and roughly double their storage value to get an estimate of how much available storage you require, ioSTOR-100 is perfect for this task.

Implementation:

I?ll now run through a single VM instance  within a vApp since this illustrates both ways of achieving the same goal.

Step 1. Build a new vApp  (if you want to move an entire vApp you just power all VM?s down and skip to step  8)

Step 2. Give it a name and optional description, then click Finish.

Step 3. Now Power Off the VM to be moved.

Step 4. Right Click the VM and select ?Copy to??, Select the vApp you created earlier and click Next.

Step 5. Now choose the storage policy for the VM to be copied to and click next.

Step 6. At this point you should select ?none? for the Network before clicking Finish.

Step 7. After you configure the remaining VM options and click Finish, you should see the VM being copied to the new vApp you created earlier.

Step 8. Once complete you can log into an existing VM in the target zone, browse to the vCloud portal for the source zone, right click and download the template.

Step 9. From here it?s just a matter of going to your target zone and uploading it to the catalogue as a template or even deploying as a vApp ready to use.

You?re done!

 

I hope this helped and keep an eye out for more posts.

If you?re having any issues or have questions to ask, please go through the usual support avenues outlined on our Support Page or reference Quick Start Guide for Virtual Data Centres for more information.