vSphere Cloud Native Storage supports migration of persistent container volumes between datastores.

Considerations and Limitations

When you perform the migration, keep in mind the following considerations:
  • You can migrate only single block volumes.
  • Make sure that original and target datastores are accessible to all nodes of the Kubernetes cluster. This applies to single zone deployments and to Kubernetes clusters deployed across multiple zones.
  • If a volume is attached to a VM, the VM remains locked during volume relocation. If the volume you relocate is attached to a node VM, the system does not allow any other control operations on the VM. The operations include attaching or detaching other volumes to the VM, migrating the VM to a different datastore, changing any configuration of the VM, and so on.
  • Cloud Native Storage does not support PMEM storage. Attempts to relocate a volume to a PMEM datastore fail.
  • The target datastore must have sufficient free capacity to accommodate the migrated volume. If the free space of a datastore is less than the volume size, you cannot select the datastore for migration.
  • The vSphere Client does not support automatic storage policy changes during the migration operation. However, the system doesn’t prevent you from selecting a datastore with incompatible policy as a target datastore for migration.
  • After the migration, you can locate the virtual disk that backs the volume in one of the following folders on a target datastore:
    • FCD directory on the datastore.
    • VM folder if the volume is attached to a VM.

For additional details, see the VMware Knowledge Base article 90607.

Migrate Container Volumes

You can use the vSphere Client to migrate the persistent container volumes.

Prerequisites

  • Make sure that the target datastore has sufficient free capacity to accommodate the migrated volume.
  • Make sure you have permissions for the target datastore.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to the vCenter Server instance, a data center, a datastore, or a cluster.
  2. Click the Monitor tab and click Container Volumes under Cloud Native Storage.
  3. From the list of volumes, select a volume and click Migrate.
    The screenshot shows a list of volumes and the Migrate button.
  4. On the Migrate volume page, select the target datastore.
    The target datastore might display a warning. You can still proceed with the migration operation when the warnings include the following:
    • Policy incompatible. When the storage policy of the target datastore is not the same as the storage policy of the volume.
    • Inaccessible volume. When the volume is migrated from a datastore that is accessible from a set of hosts to a datastore that is not accessible from all hosts.

    The list of target datastores on the Migrate volume page.

  5. Select the Acknowledge check box and click Migrate to proceed with the migration operation.