Cross vCenter Workload Migration Utility

Posted By Rajesh Radhakrishnan February 01 2018

This tool allows users to easily migrate virtual machines in bulk from a graphical user interface between vCenter Servers (same & different SSO Domains supported) using the Cross-vCenter vMotion feature.

Key Features

  • Completely UI-driven workflow for VM migration
  • Provides REST API for managing migration operations
  • Works with vCenter not a part of the same SSO domain
  • Support for batch migration of multiple VMs in parallel
  • Supports both live as well as cold migration of VMs
  • Performs storage vMotion, not requiring shared storage
  • Flexible network mappings between source and destination sites

 

Prerequisites

  • vCenter Servers 6.0 or above
  • Java Runtime Environment 1.8 or higher
  • Browser
  • Please review KB for Cross vCenter vMotion Requirements

Instructions

  1. Run the utility jar file from a shell window 
    $ java -jar xvm-1.0.jar

    Default app port is 8080 which can be changed (e.g., 31000) by providing an additional flag:

    $ java -jar -Dserver.port=31000 xvm-1.0.jar
  2. Connection to the app from the browser. Use IP address/hostname of the machine (127.0.0.1 for localhost) where the utility is running as host 
    http://<host>:<port>
  3. Register vCenter servers for migration operations on the ‘Register’ tab. Provide required parameters: 
    Sitename: a name to identify the vCenter server
vCenter Hostname/IP address, username, password
Insecure connection: select to skip SSL verification during VC connection
  4. Initiate VM migration operations from the ‘Migrate’ tab. Progress of migration tasks can be monitored on the home page. Provide required parameters (select values from menu): 
    Source and target sites: select sites from already registered sites
Source VMs: select datacenter and VMs from the source site for migration
Target cluster and datastore: select cluster and datastore from target site where VMs should be placed after migration
Network mappings: select networks to map from source to target sites

Notes

  • Application logs are stored in xvm.log file
  • REST APIs for automating migration tasks can be accessed/executed from the API link in the top navigation bar which links to Swagger UI.
  • The app stores its state in memory, implying a restart of the app loses data about registered sites and migration tasks
  • Please refer to this KB article for supported configurations for Cross vCenter vMotion

Reference