ESXi 5.1 Storage vMotion

We have a 5.1 vCenter server, with several hosts, some on 5.0 and others in 5.1.

We are licensed in Standard edition.

Using the vCenter Web Client we can Storage vMotion VMs between the 5.1 hosts (with local storage).

However, using the vSphere Client (Desktop client), we can't do that, the option to 'Change both host and datastore' is grayed out with a note saying

The virtual machine must be powered off to change the VM's host and datastore.

Any ideas on what to check? looks like a bug in the vSphere client.

Versions:

• vCenter 5.1.0, 1123961



• hosts ESXi 5.1.0, 1065491


• vSphere Client: 5.1.0 1064113

Answer

To do VMotion without shared storage in 5.1, it can only be done from the vSphere Web Client.

There was no more development of vSphere Client - especially the new 5.1 features.

Refer to VMware blog here. It seems vSphere Client is being deprecated.

And refer to the 5.1 release notes:

vSphere Client. In vSphere 5.1, all new vSphere features are available only through the vSphere Web Client. The traditional vSphere Client will continue to operate, supporting the same feature set as vSphere 5.0, but not exposing any of the new features in vSphere 5.1.