VMWARE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS VMOTION

1.What is vMotion?
Live migration of a virtual machine from one ESX server to another with Zero
downtime . VMs disk files stay where they are (on shared storage)
2. What are the use cases of vMotion ?
Balance the load on ESX servers (DRS)
Save power by shutting down ESX using DPM
Perform patching and maintenance on ESX server (Update Manager or HW
maintenance
3. What are Pre-requisites for the vMotion to Work?

ESX host must be licensed for VMotion

ESX servers must be configured with vMotion Enabled VMkernel Ports.
ESX servers must have compatible CPU's for the vMotion to work
ESX servers should have Shared storage (FB, iSCSI or NFS) and VM's should
be stored on that storage.
ESX servers should have exact similar network & network names

4. What are the Limitations of vMotion?

Virtual machines configured with the Raw Device Mapping(RDM) for

clustering features using vMotion
VM cannot be connected to a CD-ROM or floppy drive that is using an ISO or
floppy image stored on a drive that is local to the host server. The device
should be disconnected before initiating the vMotion.
Virtual Machine cannot be migrated with VMotion unless the destination
swapfile location is the same as the source swapfile location. As a best
practice, Place the virtual machine swap files with the virtual machine
configuration file.
Virtual Machine affinity must not be set (aka, bound to physical CPUs).

5. Steps involved in VMWare vMotion ?

A request has been made that VM-1 should be migrated (or "VMotioned")
from ESX A to ESX B.

VM-1's memory is pre-copied from ESX A to ESX B while ongoing changes are
written to a memory bitmap on ESX A.

VM-1 is quiesced on ESX A and VM-1's memory bitmap is copied to ESX B.

VM-1 is started on ESX B and all access to VM-1 is now directed to the copy
running on ESX B.

The rest of VM-1's memory is copied from ESX A all the while memory is
being read and written from VM-1 on ESX A when applications attempt to
access that memory on VM-1 on ESX B.

If the migration is successful, VM-1 is unregistered on ESX A.