In the VMware infrastructure, Zerto is replicating VMDK disks and builds journal history of available checkpoints for recovery. Depends on the size of the disks and the journal history needed, you need to have sufficient disk space available on datastores in DR site. Sometimes, because of lack of free space on the datastore or any other reason, you have to move VMDK disk file to other datastore in DR site. This can be done by editing the VPG or using vMotion.
Edit VPG
Go to Zerto portal, VPG section and edit a VPG.
Go to Storage section. In Recovery Volume Location click pen icon and choose destination datastore. Then click OK and Apply.
Zerto has a limited time for this operation – 30 minutes. This is fine for small disks, but larger disks won’t have enough time to move because the task is canceled automatically after 30 minutes. Zerto support can provide a tweak tool that should extend the timeout.
However, if you don’t have a tweak, you can just use vMotion, which has no timeout.
Z-VRA vMotion
To use vMotion you need to know to which Z-VRA in DR site this VMDK is attached. To do that, check the VMDK name in Production site. Verify to which Z-VRA this VMDK is replicated, and specify where you want to move the disk.
Once you know the location, right click the Z-VRA (or Z-VRAH) in DR vCenter and choose Migrate:
Click Yes.
Change storage only
Choose Configure per disk, select disk which you want to move and click Configure.
If you want to choose a particular datastore, select option “Disable Storage DRS…”.
Then choose a datastore you want.
As you can see, we are moving only Hard Disk 5.
Click Next and Finish.
Now the task starts and there is no time limit, so even if you have 2TB disk that will take some time but should finish successfully. Zerto will automatically refresh VPG settings once the move is done.
Remember that you cannot perform any activity on the Z-VRA when the task is running, so you cannot move replication or start another task for moving disk on same Z-VRA.
Thank you for reading! Here are some links you may be interested in:
- More articles on main page: https://vmcloud.pl/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krzysztofsalwa/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/vmcloudpl
- GitHub: https://github.com/vmcloudpl
- VMware vExpert: https://vexpert.vmware.com/
- VMware Communities: https://communities.vmware.com/
- VMUG: https://www.vmug.com/
- VMware Explore: https://www.vmware.com/explore.html
- VMware Store EU: https://store-eu.vmware.com/
- VMware Store US: https://store-us.vmware.com/
vmcloud.pl 
Leave a comment