The Migrate VM workflow step allows you to migrate a vCenter VM. You can add this workflow step to a completion workflow and a command workflow.
Here are a few examples of what this step allows you to do:
- after a new organization and/or primary owner are assigned to a VM, migrate the VM to the destination that matches the new organization and/or primary owner
- deploy a new VM on a "staging" destination, configure it (using Puppet, for example), and then migrate it to "Production"
- migrate an unused VM to an "Archive" destination (and back)
- migrate VMs off of hardware during decommissioning
- migrate VMs to new hardware
For a new service request completion workflow, you must select a deployment destination from the Choose Destination drop-down menu.
For a change request completion workflow, choose one of the following from the Destination drop-down menu:
- Let the system decide: Commander chooses the best destination, taking into consideration the $DESTINATION and $ORGANIZATION deployment parameters as well as destination assignment. For non-vCenter VMs with this option, this workflow step does nothing.
- Take from approver comments: Commander uses the $DESTINATION deployment parameter value entered as an approval workflow comment. For non-vCenter VMs, this option will cause the workflow step to fail.
- Choose from list: When you select this option, you must select a deployment destination from the Choose Destination drop-down menu. For non-vCenter VMs, this option will cause the workflow step to fail.
For a command workflow, you must select either Let the system decide or Choose from list from the Destination drop-down.
The VM is completely migrated to the new destination (including its datastore, host, folder, network and resource pool).
If the new destination has the same network, Commander uses the same network; otherwise the network is reconfigured.
When selecting the network by network zone:
- If a matching destination for a VM is found but the destination doesn't have a matching network zone, Commander looks for a matching network zone on the VM's host.
- If a matching destination for the VM isn't found, Commander looks for a matching network zone on the VM's host.
- If Commander finds more than one network with a given network zone, the first (alphabetically) is used.
If the VM's disk must be migrated, Commander matches the format (thin or thick provisioned) configured for the new destination. If Commander can't match the storage tier on the new destination, migration will fail.