Using the VMware Cloud Director Service Provider Admin Portal, you can migrate all vApps, independent disks, and catalog items of one or more organizations from one or more datastores to different datastores.

Note: Starting with VMware Cloud Director 10.6, you can migrate tenant storage also by using the Tenant Portal when you navigate to Cloud Resources > Organizations > Migrate Tenant Storage

Before you decommission a datastore, you must migrate all the items stored on that datastore to a new datastore. You might also want to migrate an organization to a new datastore that has more storage capacity or uses a newer storage technology such as VMware vSAN.

Important:

Tenant storage migration is a resource-intensive operation that can run for a long time, especially when there are many assets to migrate. For more information about migrating tenant storage, see https://kb.vmware.com/kb/2151086.

The following table describes what happens if attached named disks or media are on the datastore that you want to migrate.
Table 1. Named Disk and Media Migration
Option Description
Named disk attached to a VM When a named disk is attached to a VM, it becomes part of the hard disk. VMware Cloud Director migrates the named disk as part of the VM migration.
Note: When you detach this disk, it remains on the migrated datastore.
Standalone named disk (not attached to a VM) VMware Cloud Director migrates the standalone named disk to the target datastore.
Shared named disk attached to a VM

VMware Cloud Director does not support the migration of shared named disks when they are attached to one or more VMs.

You must detach the shared named disk before the migration. If you try to migrate a shared named disk attached to a VM, the migration fails.
Standalone shared named disk (not attached to a VM) VMware Cloud Director migrates the standalone shared named disk to the target datastore.
Media inserted to one or more VMs

VMware Cloud Director does not support the migration of media inserted to VMs.

You must eject the media before the migration. If you try to migrate media inserted to VMs, the migration fails.
Standalone media (not inserted to one or more VMs) VMware Cloud Director migrates the standalone media to the target datastore.

Prerequisites

  • Determine the storage policies used by the organization VDCs of the target organizations. See Add a VM Storage Policy to a VMware Cloud Director Organization Virtual Data Center.
  • For each storage policy containing a source datastore that you want to migrate, verify that there is at least one destination datastore to which to migrate. You can create destination datastores or use existing ones. For further information about determining the datastores in the storage policies used by the target organizations, see the vSphere Storage documentation.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the VMware Cloud Director Service Provider Admin Portal as a system administrator or with a role that has the Organization: Migrate Tenant Storage right.
  2. Start the Migrate Tenant Storage wizard.
    • Under Cloud Resources, select Organizations and click Migrate Tenant Storage.
    • Under vSphere Resources, select Datastores and click Migrate Tenant Storage.
  3. Select one or more organizations with storage items that you want to migrate, and click Next.
  4. Select one or more source datastores to migrate.
    The wizard lists all datastores in the system.
  5. (Optional) To migrate in their entirety all the VMs which have components on the selected datastores, turn on the Migrate Entire Virtual Machine toggle.
    By default, VMware Cloud Director migrates only the components from the selected datastore. If you turn on the toggle, when a VM has two disks and you select only one for migration, VMware Cloud Director migrates also the inventory from the other disk to the new datastore.
  6. Click Next.
  7. Select one or more destination datastores, and click Next.
  8. Review the Ready to Complete page, and click Finish to begin the migration.

What to do next

Starting with VMware Cloud Director 10.6, you can migrate the tenant storage for primary distributed catalogs. However, you cannot migrate datastores of a bound distributed catalog.

Note: You cannot migrate distributed catalog storage policies.
If you want to decommission a datastore used for a bound distributed catalog:
  1. Delete the distributed catalog locally without using the Force option.
  2. Disconnect the datastore replication and redirect the replication from the source to a new target datastore.
  3. Remove the old datastore from the storage policy.