community.vmware.vmware_vmotion module – Move a virtual machine using vMotion, and/or its vmdks using storage vMotion.

Note

This module is part of the community.vmware collection (version 6.1.0).

You might already have this collection installed if you are using the ansible package. It is not included in ansible-core. To check whether it is installed, run ansible-galaxy collection list.

To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install community.vmware.

To use it in a playbook, specify: community.vmware.vmware_vmotion.

Synopsis

  • Using VMware vCenter, move a virtual machine using vMotion to a different host, and/or its vmdks to another datastore using storage vMotion.

Parameters

Parameter

Comments

destination_cluster

string

Name of the destination cluster the virtual machine should be running on.

Only works if drs is enabled for this cluster.

destination_datacenter

string

Name of the destination datacenter the datastore is located on.

Optional, required only when datastores are shared across datacenters.

destination_datastore

aliases: datastore

string

Name of the destination datastore the virtual machine’s vmdk should be moved on.

destination_datastore_cluster

string

Name of the destination datastore cluster (storage pod) the virtual machine’s vmdk should be moved on.

Only works if drs is enabled for the cluster the vm is running / should run.

destination_host

aliases: destination

string

Name of the destination host the virtual machine should be running on.

Version 2.6 onwards, this parameter is not a required parameter, unlike the previous versions.

destination_resourcepool

aliases: resource_pool

string

Name of the destination resource pool where the virtual machine should be running.

Resource pool is required if vmotion is done between hosts which are part of different clusters or datacenters.

if not passed, resource_pool object will be retrived from host_obj parent.

hostname

string

The hostname or IP address of the vSphere vCenter server.

If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable VMWARE_HOST will be used instead.

moid

string

Managed Object ID of the instance to manage if known, this is a unique identifier only within a single vCenter instance.

This is required if vm_name or vm_uuid is not supplied.

password

aliases: pass, pwd

string

The password of the vSphere vCenter server.

If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable VMWARE_PASSWORD will be used instead.

port

integer

The port number of the vSphere vCenter server.

If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable VMWARE_PORT will be used instead.

Default: 443

proxy_host

string

The address of a proxy that will receive all HTTPS requests and relay them.

The format is a hostname or a IP.

If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable VMWARE_PROXY_HOST will be used instead.

proxy_port

integer

The port of the HTTP proxy that will receive all HTTPS requests and relay them.

If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable VMWARE_PROXY_PORT will be used instead.

timeout

integer

added in community.vmware 3.4.0

The timeout in seconds. When the timeout is reached, the module will fail.

Default: 3600

use_instance_uuid

boolean

Whether to use the VMware instance UUID rather than the BIOS UUID.

Choices:

  • false ← (default)

  • true

username

aliases: admin, user

string

The username of the vSphere vCenter server.

If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable VMWARE_USER will be used instead.

validate_certs

boolean

Allows connection when SSL certificates are not valid. Set to false when certificates are not trusted.

If the value is not specified in the task, the value of environment variable VMWARE_VALIDATE_CERTS will be used instead.

Choices:

  • false

  • true ← (default)

vm_name

aliases: vm

string

Name of the VM to perform a vMotion on.

This is required parameter, if vm_uuid is not set.

vm_uuid

aliases: uuid

string

UUID of the virtual machine to perform a vMotion operation on.

This is a required parameter, if vm_name or moid is not set.

Notes

Note

  • All modules require API write access and hence are not supported on a free ESXi license.

  • All variables and VMware object names are case sensitive.

  • Modules may rely on the ‘requests’ python library, which does not use the system certificate store by default. You can specify the certificate store by setting the REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE environment variable. Note having this variable set may cause a ‘false’ value for the ‘validate_certs’ option to be ignored in some cases. Example: ‘export REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=/path/to/your/ca_bundle.pem’

Examples

- name: Perform vMotion of virtual machine
  community.vmware.vmware_vmotion:
    hostname: '{{ vcenter_hostname }}'
    username: '{{ vcenter_username }}'
    password: '{{ vcenter_password }}'
    vm_name: 'vm_name_as_per_vcenter'
    destination_host: 'destination_host_as_per_vcenter'
  delegate_to: localhost

- name: Perform vMotion of virtual machine
  community.vmware.vmware_vmotion:
    hostname: '{{ vcenter_hostname }}'
    username: '{{ vcenter_username }}'
    password: '{{ vcenter_password }}'
    moid: vm-42
    destination_host: 'destination_host_as_per_vcenter'
  delegate_to: localhost

- name: Perform vMotion of virtual machine to resource_pool
  community.vmware.vmware_vmotion:
    hostname: '{{ vcenter_hostname }}'
    username: '{{ vcenter_username }}'
    password: '{{ vcenter_password }}'
    moid: vm-42
    destination_host: 'destination_host_as_per_vcenter'
    destination_resourcepool: 'destination_resourcepool_as_per_vcenter'
  delegate_to: localhost

- name: Perform storage vMotion of virtual machine
  community.vmware.vmware_vmotion:
    hostname: '{{ vcenter_hostname }}'
    username: '{{ vcenter_username }}'
    password: '{{ vcenter_password }}'
    vm_name: 'vm_name_as_per_vcenter'
    destination_datastore: 'destination_datastore_as_per_vcenter'
  delegate_to: localhost

- name: Perform storage vMotion and host vMotion of virtual machine
  community.vmware.vmware_vmotion:
    hostname: '{{ vcenter_hostname }}'
    username: '{{ vcenter_username }}'
    password: '{{ vcenter_password }}'
    vm_name: 'vm_name_as_per_vcenter'
    destination_host: 'destination_host_as_per_vcenter'
    destination_datastore: 'destination_datastore_as_per_vcenter'
  delegate_to: localhost

- name: Perform storage vMotion to a Storage Cluster and vMotion to a Cluster of virtual machine
  community.vmware.vmware_vmotion:
    hostname: '{{ vcenter_hostname }}'
    username: '{{ vcenter_username }}'
    password: '{{ vcenter_password }}'
    vm_name: 'vm_name_as_per_vcenter'
    destination_cluster: 'destination_cluster_as_per_vcenter'
    destination_datastore_cluster: 'destination_datastore_cluster_as_per_vcenter'
  delegate_to: localhost

Return Values

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this module:

Key

Description

datastore

string

List the datastore the virtual machine is on.

Only returned if there is asked for a Storage vMotion (Datastore or Datastore Cluster).

Returned: changed or success

Sample: "datastore1"

running_host

string

List the host the virtual machine is registered to.

Only returned if there is asked for a vMotion (Cluster or Host).

Returned: changed or success

Sample: "host1.example.com"

Authors

  • Bede Carroll (@bedecarroll)

  • Olivier Boukili (@oboukili)