It is part of the Optimization and Migration process. After you scan under the Optimization and Migration tab, there will be a list of machines under the misaligned folder on the left hand frame. Under that there will be a "online migration" sub folder. Once you select that subfolder a list of VM's that are eligible for the online optimization will be listed. You will then select 
Each machine individually or select "migrate all" which will launch a wizard. After the wizard has been completed VSC will then create the optimized datastore and migrate the VM's.

I would reach out to your SE for a more in depth overview of when to use this tool and the caveats etc. 



From: "Klise, Steve" <klises@sutterhealth.org>
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:07:51 -0700
To: "toasters@teaparty.net" <toasters@teaparty.net>
Subject: RE: VSC 4 and online alignment - anyone used it in anger?

Does anyone know how to get, or make, or create a VMDK (FC) LUN to be optimized?  I didn’t read it in the admin guide, or release notes.  I have created a new lun viaNetapp/vshpere plugin; tried to use an existing lun, created a new lun etc.  Every instance we see the lun as not optimized. 

 

·         Using DOT 7.3.3p2

·         6040’s HA

·         FC license

·         All luns are set to ALUA/yes

·         Vshpere is 5 and running esxi5 and esx4.x on the hosts

 

 

From: toasters-bounces@teaparty.net [mailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net] On Behalf Of Fletcher Cocquyt
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 6:25 PM
To: steve klise
Cc: cruxrealm@aol.com; toasters@teaparty.net
Subject: Re: VSC 4 and online alignment - anyone used it in anger?

 

I'm frustrated they seemed to have released it before its done - see my post from 2 weeks ago

 

"VSC 4 missing VAAI and getting no VMs for aligned/not aligned"

 

 

Are people successfully using it to align VMs ?

 

We aligned all our VMs over a year ago when Netapp cited it as a prereq for helping us solve a latency issue.

 

I forget how I found out about VSC 4.0 - but I usually get this info from RSS feeds of blogs.

 

If the online alignment is production ready I can't believe they didn't tell folks earlier this was in the pipeline since it would save folks TONS of downtime we went through last year.

I remember asking back in June 2009 about "Adding VM re-alignment to SVMotion - which API?"

 

at that time the APIs were not there…

 

 

 

On Apr 12, 2012, at 5:17 PM, steve klise wrote:



This maybe off topic, but I am a bit frustrated here.  
 
Is there anyway ANYONE knows of a way one becomes abreast of new updates to Netapp software one has purchased?  We have someone doing re-alignments during the late evening taking downtime to re-align these windows 2003 vms.
 
 
Any help is appreciated.
 

 

BTW, thanks Peta for posting this.  This is my current method of knowing what's out there and what others are doing.

 

> From: cruxrealm@aol.com
> Subject: Re: VSC 4 and online alignment - anyone used it in anger?
> Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:47:53 -0700
> To: petathames@gmail.com
> CC: Toasters@teaparty.net
> 
> I suggest do it by batches and run in on quiet times. Also make sure you have ample space for VM snapshots.
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
> On Apr 11, 2012, at 7:26 PM, Peta Thames <petathames@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I've been testing the new functionality in VSC 4 around online
> > re-alignment. I've done some tests with a test datastore and test VM
> > under load, all fine.
> > 
> > However I have an estate of over 200 datastores. Has anyone run the
> > scan manager across all their datastores at once? Was there any
> > noticeable impact to the VMs? As far as I can tell, I can only
> > schedule the scan to scan everything at once. I know I could manually
> > do batches but I need to run the scans overnight.
> > 
> > I've found documentation around the actual online alignment function
> > and warnings to not do too many at once, but nothing about the scan.
> > There also seems to be no way of stopping the scan once it starts,
> > which makes my rollback plan in my CR for this scan a bit empty
> > looking and hard to justify.
> > 
> > And a long shot, just out of curiosity, if anyone has any information
> > on what the scan actually does would be interesting too. I can see it
> > takes a VM snapshot for each VM in the datastore, then deletes it, but
> > that's it. I've searched NOW high and low, but documentation on VSC 4
> > is pretty thin on the ground.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Peta
> > _______________________________________________
> > Toasters mailing list
> > Toasters@teaparty.net
> > http://www.teaparty.net/mailman/listinfo/toasters
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Toasters mailing list
> Toasters@teaparty.net
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