Unlock[ed]

My last blog was all about the hypervisor. I chose to save the discussion on how to free yourself from a hypervisor, its inherent costs, and lock-in. So, now I will finish my story and hopefully help you on your journey. 

Here goes migration.

There was some hesitation when I decided to move workloads from Citrix XenServer to VMware vSphere or ESXi. Though not as challenging as a physical to virtual conversion, there were no guarantees that migrating from XenServer to ESXi would be 100% successful. All I could do was plan accordingly and go for it. The worst outcome was that the conversion would fail, and I would bring the original virtual machine back online. So, I staged the conversion, starting with non-critical virtual machines. I would move them from Citrix XenServer to VMware ESXi whenever I could. During the day, evening, and on weekends. It was with these virtual machines that I learned best-practices in migrating to ESXi. When it came time for mission-critical workloads, additional planning included maintenance windows since migration required the virtual machines to be powered off. I will not pretend that this conversion process was complicated; however, I can confidently say it was very time-consuming. It consumed my nights and weekends. It took away from my personal life. It kept me locked in my office, monitoring a status bar instead of engaging with my family. 

One annoying aspect was the fact that if migration from XenServer to ESXi failed, I would have to start the entire process again. A failed migration from one hypervisor to another was a considerable inconvenience because there was no staging of the step. I had to power off the live virtual machine first before starting the conversion process. Once the conversion process started, it would begin copying the virtual disk. Depending on the size of the file, it could take hours to copy. When it came time to power the virtual machine on, if the conversion was not successful, all of those hours were wasted. In rare cases, a post-conversion task would bring the virtual machine online. However, most of the time, the issue was a service or driver that caused a boot failure once migrated to ESXi, making the converted virtual machine useless. The dreaded “blue screen of death”! The bigger problem came when I had to ask for another maintenance window and acknowledge that my previous efforts failed. Who likes to fail, and who wants to tell management they failed? I hated that moment more than anything.

Never again.

Knowing what I know, and based on my experience, why would I ever move away from VMware ESXi to another hypervisor? Why would I ever consider doing this again? As I stated earlier, the process is not smooth, and it is not fast. In contrast, VMware makes it simple to move virtual machines between clusters regardless if you are moving between hosts, clusters, or datacenters. You have vMotion and Storage vMotion. You can migrate within a vCenter or between vCenters. It is why we pay VMware whatever they ask for these features. I’d rather spend the money on VMware than infringe on my personal life, keeping me in the data center and away from my family. There is no winning in saving money by moving away from VMware, just more headaches.

And, one other thing. I built my career on VMware. So, I am staying locked-in.

Let’s get real.

I understand because I’ve been there. But, I urge you to read on. It is essential to understand that just as you built your career on VMware, you also have the opportunity to transform your career, starting with saving your employer money. Why not repurpose budget to other areas of technology and become more innovative while continuing to build your career to new heights. If not you, then who? It is inevitable. Just as more and more companies are moving workloads to the public cloud, more companies are looking for areas where they can reduce costs. It is time to show management where they can reduce costs without sacrifice.

Though Nutanix started with supporting a single hypervisor (ESXi), they soon became more than a single hypervisor platform. Nutanix chose to support all major hypervisors as well as create their own Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV). Why? Choice. A single hypervisor platform will not fit all customers’ needs. By supporting multiple hypervisors under the same platform, Nutanix delivers customer choice, giving them the ability to move between them. Nutanix provides customers with flexibility, all delivered with the same experience since it’s all part of the Nutanix platform.

Let’s get back to migration. Take a close look at what Nutanix offers in a product called Nutanix Move, a cross-hypervisor migration solution to migrate VMs with minimal downtime.

Nutanix Move supports three types of sources for migration:

• Migration of VMs running on an ESXi hypervisor managed by vCenter;
• Migration of EBS backed EC2 instances running on AWS;
• Migration of VMs running on a Hyper-V hypervisor.

You can perform the following operations with Nutanix Move:

• Migrate powered on or powered off VMs
• Pause and resume migration
• Schedule migration
• Schedule data-seeding for the virtual machines in advance and cut over to a new AHV cluster
• Manage VM migrations between multiple clusters from a single management interface
• Sort and group VMs for a smooth migration
• Monitor details of migration plan execution even at the individual VM level
• Cancel in-progress migration for individual VMs

Nutanix Move is game-changing! Select the source, define a migration plan, and migrate VMs through VMware’s VADP, ensuring consistent and efficient replication. Whether VMs are powered up or off, they are kept up-to-date until ready to cutover.

Simple cross-hypervisor migration removes the burden and adds incredible value. Take a step towards future-proofing your data center investment. I am not advertising that there is no purpose for VMware vSphere in your data center, but I am confident that in today’s modern data center, you should not be locked to a hypervisor. If advanced technology provides the ability to migrate between hypervisors easily, it makes complete sense to at least consider the alternative. 

Nutanix Move=Hypervisor Unlock[ed]

For extensive information on Nutanix Move, please refer to the Nutanix Move User Guide.