Moves a running VM to another host with no downtime; its storage counterpart, Storage vMotion, relocates the files between datastores instead.
Also called vSphere vMotion.
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Terms in this definition
- General-purpose v1
The older storage account kind (
Storage), which lacks access tiers, Archive and premium file shares and retires on 13 October 2026. Converting to ZRS requires first upgrading to GPv2, a one-way change.
Related terms
- EVC
vSphere cluster capability that exposes the same baseline CPU features on every host, allowing vMotion between different processor generations from the same vendor. A custom EVC mode can be applied to a cluster or to individual VMs.
- migration threshold
Five-step DRS slider, Conservative through Aggressive, setting how keen DRS is to recommend or perform vMotion moves to balance load.
- network pool
Subnets defined in SDDC Manager for one layer 2 domain. Hosts joining a VCF domain get static IPs from it automatically for their vMotion and vSAN/NFS/iSCSI VMkernel adapters.
- Storage DRS
Uses Storage vMotion and VMDK anti-affinity rules to choose where new VMs go and to keep space usage even across all datastores in a datastore cluster.
- VLAN
Layer 2 broadcast domain tagged using 802.1Q. In VCF they carry TEP, vSAN, vMotion and management traffic, and NSX can back segments with them.