In last post of this series, I covered the steps needed to configure on-prem environment to connect it to a cloud provider site. In this post I will demonstrate how to register cloud provider and initiate vm migration using vCloud Extender.

1: Introduction to vCloud Extender

2: vCloud Extender-Cloud Provider Setup

3: vCloud Extender-Tenant (On-Premise) Setup

Lets start with Cloud Provider registration.

Login to On-prem vCenter server webclient and click on vCloud Extender plugin and navigate to Provider Clouds tab. Click on Add a Provider Cloud button.

Specify Cloud Provider name and Provider Cloud URL. This should be in format https://provider-url/cloud/org/tenant-org-name.

Also specify the vCD Extender cloud service URL. This URL we configured in post 2 of this series.

Clicking on Test button verifies that if the supplied info is correct and the on-prem vCenter can connect to cloud environment successfully. Once test is passed, click on Add button to save the configuration.

Accept the SSL certificate presented. 

On successful connection to Cloud Provider, you will see the new provider cloud registered under the ‘Provider Clouds’ tab with a status of ‘Running’.

Also you will see accessible vDC’s to which you have access.

VM Migration

Now since we are connected to cloud provider, lets start migrating a test vm from on-prem to vCD based cloud.

To start migrating workloads from on-prem, go to Migration tab and click on New Migration.

Select migration type from the list. With each type of migration, a description is associated to give you a high level overview about that migration.

Lets start with warm migration first.

Select the source VM(s) to be migrated from the inventory. All the VM’s will be listed under folder “VM” which can be expanded by clicking > sign in front of the folder.

Once a VM is selected, its status and disk sizes are update in the right-side panel. 

Hit Next once you have selected all the VM’s which you want to migrate. 

On target cloud selection page, select the Cloud Provider, vDC, VM storage profile for the remote copy and the network to which the migrated VM will connect to in the Cloud Provider side.

In case you are migrating more than one vm, you can place them together in a single vApp rather than creating a new vApp for each VM.

I am only migrating a single vm in this demonstration so I selected the option “Each VM stays individually”. Hit Next to continue.

On last page of migration wizard, we can specify when the VM synchronization should start, Recovery Point Objective (in minutes) and whether to provision the destination disks as ‘Thin’ provisioned or ‘Thick’ provisioned. 

Optionally we can add a tag for this migration so that its easier to search this job later from task and events. 

Once migration is started, you will see progress indicator against the VM. Initially the status will be ‘Created’.

Once the initial synchronization process has completed you will see the VM listed as ‘Cutover ready’ which means it’s staged and ready to be migrated in cloud.

At this point our VM has been registered in cloud side vCenter server but not in vCD. 

Under ‘Home’ page VM status is listed as ‘Transition’ state

 

Now to migrate this vm permanently in cloud provider side, click on Start cutover button which opens the cutover dialog.

Select the VM from the list and hit Start button.

Click OK to confirm the cutover for selected vm.

Keep an eye on the cutover process.

When the cutover process is complete you will see the status as completed.

Under home page you can verify the same.

Post migration On-prem will be in powered-off state in vCenter.

On cloud provider site, VM will be registered in vCD and will be in running state.

Here is a step by step video demonstration for warm migration.

And that’s it for this post. In next post of this series I will demonstrate how to perform layer 2 extension using vCloud Extender.

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