Our VDI VMs are all dedicated and Windows 7. I've noticed that each VM has a snapshot called "Do Not Delete - Critical", I understand that is required as we use MCS with Citrix XenDesktop and the snaphots can never be deleted.. while that is crazy by itself, this poses a problems when trying to vMotion (even when VM is off) on ESXi 4.1 as the master VDMK is not in the same folder as the VMX file as described here:
----
"Moving a virtual machine that has snapshots is not supported when the virtual machine has disks or other files placed outside of its home directory and datastore. "
To workaround this issue, perform one of these options:
•Delete all snapshot files in the virtual machine before migrating to another datastore.
•Recover source virtual disk files manually: 1.Using a text editor, open the descriptor file (for example, vi test1-000001.vmdk).
2.If the parentFileNameHint property in the descriptor file is set to an absolute path (such as parentFileNameHint="/vmfs/volumes/49e399fd-a0447588-ee56-0019b9ed2060/test1/test1.vmdk"), change it to a relative path (such as parentFileNameHint="test1.vmdk").
3.Save and close the descriptor file.
---
ObviouslyI cannot delete the snapshot and changing the absolute path prevents the VM from booting because it can no longer find the master\parent VMDK which is in a dedicated folder on at the root of the datasotre. Are VMs stuck on their current datastore unless running ESXi 5?? Kind of defeats the purpose of having VMware HA\DR features!