This article provides information on the types of virtual machine migration in the vCenter Server and ESX/ESXi environments and the impact of snapshots on migration.
There are three types of virtual machine migration:
A powered-on virtual machine can be migrated to a different ESX host. In this case, all snapshots are retained when the virtual machine is vMotioned. However, the files comprising the virtual machine are not relocated. The virtual machine is unregistered from the source host and is registered to the destination host.
A powered-off virtual machine can be migrated to a different ESX host and/or to a different datastore. When a virtual machine is migrated to a different datastore, files can be individually moved to different destinations. The virtual machine files, such as .vmsd, .vmsn, -delta.vmdk, and redologs, that support snapshot functionality are moved with the .vmx configuration file.
When a virtual machine is migrated between ESX hosts without changing datastores, the files remain untouched.
Note: vMotion is supported in AppVols 2.10 and later. svMotion is not supported in View or AppVols.