Migrating Placeholder Virtual Machines Between Datastores in VMware Live Recovery environment.

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

This article provides the procedure for moving placeholder virtual machines (VMs) from one placeholder datastore to another within VMware Live Recovery. The most common scenario requiring this action is the planned decommissioning of the existing placeholder datastore

Environment

VMware Live Recovery Manager 9.x

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

Planned storage decommissioning or migration requires the manual reconfiguration and recreation of placeholder virtual machines onto a new, healthy placeholder datastore.

Resolution

Please follow the below steps to migrate placeholder virtual machines to a new placeholder datastore  prior to storage decommissioning.

 

1. Configuration Check and Mapping:

• Log into the vSphere Client.
• Navigate to Site Recovery > Open Site Recovery.
• Select a site pair and click View Details.
• In the left navigation pane, click on Configure > Placeholder Datastores.
• Click Add (or Configure Placeholder Datastore), select the new, healthy datastore from the list  and click OK to map it. Ensure the new datastore is correctly added and mapped for the recovery site.
• Confirm that all ESXi hosts and clusters at the recovery site have active access to the new placeholder datastore.
• Repeat the steps for the remote paired site to ensure bi-directional consistency.

2. Unconfigure Old Storage:

• Export the virtual machine list from the old placeholder datastore for validation purposes. This is optional.
• Within the Placeholder Datastores menu, select the local site, select the old placeholder datastore, and click Remove (or Delete) to clear the current mapping. This prevents the system from attempting to use the old storage for new placeholders.

3. Cleanup and Restore Placeholder Virtual Machines:

• On the vCenter Server UI, remove all of the placeholder virtual machines hosted on the old datastore from the inventory.
• Navigate to each Protection Group, select the Virtual Machines tab, and click RESTORE ALL PLACEHOLDER VMS.
• This process recreates the placeholder virtual machines and configuration files on the newly mapped datastore.
• Validate if all the protected virtual machines have successfully registered placeholder .vmx files on the newly assigned datastore.
• Verify that all virtual machines show a Protection Status of "OK" and are no longer referencing the old storage paths.

4. Decommission Old Storage:

• Once compliance is verified and no errors remain, safely proceed with standard vSphere procedures to unmount and detach the decommissioned storage volume from the ESXi hosts via the standard storage management interface.
• If any "Inaccessible" virtual machines remain in the vCenter Server inventory after the storage is detached, manually remove them from the inventory.