You may ask yourself if I have all the proper configuration and vCenter in place why do I need Veeam Quick Migration. Well….. I do have all the proper configuration, licensing and vCenter, and I use Quick Migration a couple of times a week.
What do I use it for? In my production environment I don’t like to put any unknown’s in the mix. But we all need unknown’s from time to time. We need to test product’s, application upgrades, Security patches, Service packs, and many other things. I do this all within my Company Lab, it’s a totally isolated infrastructure with it’s own hosts, Shared Storage, and networking Stack.
The problem I used to have was, my production host, and storage couldn’t see my Lab host, or storage. To move the VM’s from the production to the Lab or vice versa was not always an easy task. It involved using VMware converter, performing backups and moving them across the wire, or with USB media, Attaching my Lab Host to the SAN for a short period of time. But since using Veeam Quick Migration I don’t need to do that anymore.
To make sure that Veeam could access my Lab Infrastructure I configured a backup proxy on a VM in the Lab. If you are using the licensed version of Veeam this does not add to your license hosts, it is also available in the Veeam Backup Free Edition.
Below is a more technical details on Quick Migration, and screenshots of a Quick Migration being performed.
Quick Migration
Veeam Backup & Replication analyzes your virtual environment, its configuration, the state of VMs and selects the most appropriate relocation method. Whenever possible, Veeam Backup & Replication coordinates its operations with vCenter Server and uses native VMware vCenter migration mechanisms: vMotion and Storage vMotion. When VMware vCenter migration methods cannot be used (for example, if your VMware vSphere license does not provide support for vMotion and Storage vMotion, or you need to migrate VMs from one standalone ESX(i) host to another), Veeam Backup & Replication uses its proprietary SmartSwitch technology to relocate VMs.
Veeam Quick Migration provides means for fast background migration of VMs ensuring continuous uptime of your virtual environment. Quick Migration supports hot VM migration (with SmartSwitch) and cold VM migration (with cold switch).
Migration of a VM is performed in several stages:
1.Veeam Backup & Replication copies VM configuration (.vmx) to the target host and registers the VM.
2.Veeam Backup & Replication triggers a VM snapshot and copies VM disk content to the new destination.
3.VM state and changes made after snapshot creation are moved to a new location. Veeam Backup & Replication uses different approaches to move the VM state between hosts with compatible and non‑compatible CPUs.
•If you move a VM between two hosts with compatible CPUs, Veeam Backup & Replication uses SmartSwitch (that is, it suspends a VM to move its state file and changes made after snapshot creation). The VM is then resumed on the new host. This ensures minimum downtime, and completely eliminates any data loss during migration.
•If you move a VM between two hosts with non‑compatible CPUs, Veeam Backup & Replication stops the VM to move changes made after snapshot creation, and then starts the VM on the new host.
http://www.veeam.com/vmware-backup/help-center/vsphere/index.html?quick_migration.htm
Quick Migration Architecture
Quick Migration architecture in a VMware vSphere environment comprises the following components:
•Source host and target host with associated datastores
•One or two backup proxy servers
Similar to backup, Quick Migration uses two-agent architecture: the source‑side agent interacts with the source host, and the target‑side agent interacts with the target host. To perform onsite migration, you can deploy one backup proxy for data processing and transfer. This backup proxy must have access to the source host and to the target host at the same time. In this scenario, the source‑side agent and the target‑side agent are started on the same backup proxy.
The common requirement for offsite migration is that one Veeam agent runs in the production site (closer to the source host and datastore), and the other agent runs in the remote target site (closer to the target host and datastore). During backup, the agents maintain a stable connection, which allows for uninterrupted operation over WAN or slow links.
For offsite migration, you need to deploy at least one local backup proxy in each site: a source backup proxy in the production site, and a target backup proxy in the remote target site.
http://www.veeam.com/vmware-backup/help-center/vsphere/index.html?migration_architecture.htm
Migration Demo
Go to the “Virtual Machines”
Locate the VM you want to migrate. You can also do this with a powered on VM, for my situation powered off is fine.
Right click and select “Quick Migration”
At this point just select “Next” unless you wanted to add another VM to the Migration.
I then go ahead and pick my Lab Host for the Destination. Pick a resource pool if you would like, choose your folder to place the VM, and select your Datastore. Click “Next”
Now you can pick your Backup Proxy. I like to choose mine but you select auto if you would like. Just takes a step out of troubleshooting if it was to fail for some reason. I go ahead and tell it to force the Veeam quick migration no matter if vMotion was support or not.
Go ahead and verify your settings, if all looks good go ahead and select finish. You may also choose to delete the VM after Migration if successful. Myself, I like to go ahead and do that myself. Especially if I just want to clone the VM.
You will now see the status of the Job.
You can see from the screen shot below that it completed in 25 Minutes, and is ready to use.
If you click on the VM Name it will show more details. No different than any other Veeam Status report.
The VM on the old host will be renamed with a _migrated appended to the end of the name.
On the new VM it will be named the way it was originally.
Before you power up the VM you may have to go in and assign the VM the proper Network, if you have network’s consistent across your Host you will not have to assign the network.
Here is the VM all running and happy. Once I see that I go ahead and delete the Migrated VM from my Production host and storage.
How do you use Quick Migration?
The Cloud Eh!? 
Hi, but you do with powered off machine!!!!! try with power on vm, sometimes ago was a problem but now i think is ok also.
Previous version of veeam was bugged, delete old vm but sometimes new vm is corrupted so you need backup, i see now don’t remove but rename.
I just tested Quick Migration using SmartSwitch with a test VM (fresh Win2012R2) across 2 hosts with the same CPU with their own local storage, and a SmartSwitch migration resulted in a total downtime of 4 minutes. After the original VM is suspended, it then takes a snapshot and copies it over to the destination as well as the VM state. Once that is done, the VM is resumed on the new host. Obviously, your storage and network performance would greatly impact said downtime, but there’s my example for anyone wondering.