A couple of months ago i spoke about the possiblity of using VMotion over a WAN connection. Well yesterday at VMWorld, VMware announced that long distance VMotion was now supported for up to 200 Kilometers.

Here is what Erik Zandboer posted:

Today was announced that long distance VMotion is now officially supported by VMware up to a distance of 200 kilometers. A team-up from Cisco, VMware and EMC did some tests, proving the possibilities. Long distance VMotion is basically the VMotioning between two remote datacenters, enabling follow the sun, follow the moon, or evacuating a datacenter anticipating on a soon-to-be-disaster (”the tornado is coming”).

Of course some limitations apply.  Things like maximum latency of 5ms round trip and minimum bandwidth of 622 Mbits/sec apply, but still! Long distance VMotion is a fact, and I guess will soon be accepted as an enterprise solution just like normal VMotion has.

So how long do you think it’ll be until the limit of 200K is extended? As Internet connections get quicker and quicker and latency gets lower these chains will be loosened. Could we soon see VMotion between countries? Continents? In my view; Yes we will, but it will be a while off yet.