vMotion Not Support CallManager until now?

[Chi Fai Leung]

Hi,

I am planning a solution for the CallManager publisher resilience. Actually, I want to deploy two publishers: One is for the main site and second is for the backup site (Active/Standby). Is it the vMotion support that? Not support on CallManager util now?

[Terry Cheema]

Review this:

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Unified_Communications_VMware_Requirements#VMware_vMotion

VMware vMotion

NOTE: support varies by app and version. Before reading the best practices below, verify support at Supported Editions and Features of VMware vSphere ESXi, VMware vCenter and VMware vSphere Client.

This feature migrates a live, running Virtual Machine (VM) from one physical server to another.

The following applies to any use of vMotion with UC apps:

• VM must be installed on shared storage (SAN).
• Source and destination physical servers must be connected to same SAN.
• Destination physical server must not end up with over-subscribed hardware after the migration. Supported capacity and co-residency rules for UC must be followed before and after the migration.
• VMware “Long Distance vMotion” (site to site) is not supported.
• The only supported scenario is a manual move to a different server, e.g. for planned maintenance on the server or VMware software, or during troubleshooting to move software off of a physical server having issues.
• Use of vMotion for real-time load-balancing of live UC VMs is not supported, whether alone or in conjunction with VMware Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS) or Dynamic Power Management (DPM).
• Moving a shut down VM during a maintenance window, i.e. a "cold migration" or "host to host migration", is not vMotion and is supported.

If the UC app is listed as "Supported with Caveats", then support is as described below:

• Migration of UC VMs that are live and processing live traffic is supported, but note that Cisco testing cannot cover every possible operational scenario. Testing has shown there is a slight risk of calls in progress being impacted for a few seconds as the migration occurs, with worst case result of the affected calls being dropped. If vMotion is suspected as the cause of dropped calls, customers should gather appropriate application logs as well as performance data from VMware vCenter and send to Cisco TAC for analysis.

If the UC app is listed as "Partial" support, then support is “maintenance mode only” as described below:

• "Maintenance mode only" - VMware vMotion by definition operates on live VMs, but the VM running the UC app must be “live but quiescent”. I.e. in a maintenance window, not in production, not processing live traffic. This is because during the vMotion cutover, the system is paused, which for real-time UC apps creates service interruption which degrade voice quality after the migration for calls in progress.
• Specifically for Cisco Unified Attendant Consoles, this means the CUxAC VM must not be doing any Hot Swap or taking any active calls, with no active Directory Synchronization in progress.

Ref: http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Unified_Communications_VMware_Requirements#Supported_Features_of_VMware_vSphere_ESXi.2C_VMware_vCenter_and_VMware_vSphere_Client

VMware Feature Support for Unified Communications 8.0(2) through 10.0

For guide to abbreviations, see At a Glance table at http://www.cisco.com/go/uc-virtualized.

Feature	CUCM PCD PLM	Cisco Paging  Server	CER	SME	CUxAC	PCP	PCA	UPM	UOM, USM, USSM	CIME	Unity Connection	CUP + IM&P
vSphere ESXi 4.0 Features
VM Templates (OVAs)	Y(C)		Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(C)	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(C)
Copy Virtual Machine	Y(C)		Y(C)	Y(C)	No	Y(C)	no	Y(C)	No	Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(C)
Restart Virtual Machine on Different ESXi Host	Y(C)		Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(C)
Resize Virtual Machine	Y(P)		Y(P)	Y(P)	Y(P)	Y(P)	Y(P)	Y(P)	Y(P)	Y(P)	Y(P)	Y(P)
VMware Hot Add	No		No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Multiple Physical NICs and vNICs	Y(P)		Y(P)	Y(P)	Y(P)	Yes	Y(P)	Yes	Y(P)	Y(P)	Y(P)	Y(P)
VMware High Availability (HA)	Y(C)		Y(C)	Y(C)	No	Y(C)	No	Y(C)	No	Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(C)
VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM)	Y(C)		Y(C)	Y(C)	No	Y(C)	No	Y(C)	No	Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(C)
VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch	Y(C)		Y(C)	Y(C)	No	Y(C)	No	Y(C)	No	Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(C)
VMware vMotion	Y(C)		Y(C)	Y(C)	Y(P)	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	Y(P)	Y(C)
VMware Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS)	No		No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
VMware Dynamic Power Management	No		No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Long Distance vMotion	No		No	No	No	Y(C)	No	Y(C)	No	No	No	No
VMware Storage vMotion	Y(C)		Y(C)	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No	No

New vSphere ESXi 5.x Features
vSphere Storage Appliance	See Storage Requirements for Specs-based hardware support (click here)
vSphere Data Protection (VDP)	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
All other new features in vSphere ESXi 5.x	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No

-Terry

[Chi Fai Leung]

Not support the Long Distance vMotion is fine. But why need the same of storage? Layer 2?
Can I use the different local storage to make the Live vMotion?

[Chris Deren]

Officially not supported, though I have done it many times.  Depending on ESXi version you may need to use the web client (plenty info out there on google). 

Otherwise you would need to shut down the VM and then perform vMotion.

[Chi Fai Leung]

Officially not supported, though I have done it many times.  <----  On your experience, that is no down time to make the Live vMotion without shared storage?? Fine??

[ucengineer]

Hi

i need to migrate ccm pub into different dc. I know vmotion is not possible due to no support on long distance. What are the other possible ways to migrate and sync with subs.

Any impact on licensing?

Regads,

[Chris Deren]

You can re-IP the Pub (Cisco has a doc with steps for each CUCM version) and then SCP copy the VM to new ESXi host.

[Manish Gogna]

Hi Chi,

Prior to ESXi 5.1, VM must be installed on shared storage (SAN) and source and destination physical servers must be connected to same SAN. In ESXi 5.1+ vMotion allows "DAS to DAS", i.e. VM can be installed on DAS and source/destination physical servers can have different DAS yet still vMotion the VM.

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Unified_Communications_VMware_Requirements#VMware_vMotion

Manish