Solved: What are the requirements of VMs migration to Dell PowerStore SAN using Agentless Import?

Question

When migrating VMWare virtual machine from Compellent SAN to new Dell PowerStore SAN, a minimum requirement of ESX 6.7 Update 1 on the host in order to do an Agentless Import. The ESXi installation is on SD Card. I will be upgrading the hosts (three) and vSphere to Version 7 beforehand. I have questions as below:

• What is the benefit of Agentless Import?
• Do the VM’s need to have VM Tools upgraded before the migration?
• Does a VM Tool update require a reboot of the VM?

Answer

You will be able to use the Migrate function of vCenter Server to Migrate VMs from your Compellent SAN to PowerStore SAN, if both are connected to an ESXi host. VMware vSphere Hypervisor 7.0 (ESXi 7.0) from 7.0.2, is no longer supported on SD or USB cards. it’s been deprecated because ESXi 7.0.2 has been changed and it corrupts the SD cards.

Installations to NVMe, SSD, SATADOM, HDD etc now only, so you may have to order new components for you’re servers, and also check they are on the HCL.

What is the benefit of Agentless Import?

Agentless Import manages the migration of the existing datastores including VMs, into the new PowerStore.

Do the VM’s need to have VM Tools upgraded before the migration?

No. VMware Tools are generally backward compatible with later versions of ESXi, you can check the VMware matrix for compatibility. At the next patch cycle, we would recommend you update VMware Tools because a reboot maybe required, or a reboot is done. So, the link is with the Host OS, not the storage.

Does a VM Tool update require a reboot of the VM?

Possibly. Up to you what you use whether you do the Agentless import, or just do a standard Migrate between datastores. but you would need to add new SAN, and create the datastores and present to ESXi hosts first, before you can use Migrate and/or Storage vMotion.