Introduction

Migrating to Virtual Machines empowers you to effortlessly shift (Lift and Shift) your virtual machines (VMs) from your original setup to Google Compute Engine with minimal automated tweaks. Through data replication technology, Migrate to Virtual Machines constantly mirrors disk data from your source VMs to Google Cloud, seamlessly and without interrupting your source environment. Subsequently, you can generate VM clones from the mirrored data for testing purposes and smoothly transition your anticipated workloads to Google Cloud for stable operations.

Data replication enables Migrate to Virtual Machines to initiate a replication of data from the source VM, facilitating rapid cloning and testing of the migrated VM. As the source VM remains operational throughout the migration, including the testing phase, Migrate to Virtual Machines continuously replicates data until the final cut-over to the migrated VM is executed. Migrate to Virtual Machines integrates seamlessly into the Google Cloud console, allowing you to execute all migration tasks directly within the Google Cloud console UI.

Migration Process

Migrate to Virtual Machines offers you a straightforward pathway to migrate your VMs to Compute Engine. The migration process progresses through the following distinct phases:

• Onboard: Choose the virtual machine that you want to migrate to gcp
• Replication: Data replication occurs continuously in the background until you perform the final cut-over or delete the migration.
• Set VM destination information: Set up Compute Engine settings for the migrated VM, including the project, instance type, memory, network, and additional configurations.
• Test Clone: You can optionally create a Compute Engine clone of the source VM from the replication data and test it on Google Cloud.
• Cut over: Migrate the source VM to Compute Engine by stopping the source VM, finalizing replication, and creating the production Compute Engine instance from the source VM.
• Finalize: Perform final cleanup after successful migration

OS Adaptations

To operate effectively on Google Cloud, migrated VMs may require configuration adjustments. This task, known as OS adaptation, occurs after each replication step to ready the VM for operation on Google Cloud.

For instance, Migrate to Virtual Machines modifies network settings, installs the Compute Engine agent, and activates the serial console on the migrated VM.

Cut-over phase

During the cut-over phase, Migrate to Virtual Machines stops the source VM, finalizes replication, and creates a new VM instance on Compute Engine on Google Cloud. Perform the cut-over only after completing all validations during the recommended testing phase. Determine a maintenance window in which you can stop the source VM and redirect traffic to the migrated VM running on Compute Engine. The cut-over phase includes a brief VM downtime and should occur during the scheduled window. When you initiate a cut-over on a migrating VM, Migrate to Virtual Machines performs the following sequence of actions:

• Source VM shut down
• Complete the final data replication. As replication takes place throughout all migration phases, the data to replicate should not be extensive. Finish any ongoing replication, if in progress. If there is no ongoing replication, initiate the final replication.
• Stop replication
• Create compute engine from final replicated data

Final Validations

After the cut-over, conduct your final validations on the migrated VM. The outcomes of the cut-over will dictate your subsequent actions:

• The cut-over has failed: The cutover to the new VM instance on Compute Engine failed, potentially because of a network problem or another straightforward issue. At this stage, the source VM is stopped, and the final replication data remains valid. Try the cut-over again to see if the retry resolves the error.
• The cut-over has succeeded but there still seems something wrong with the vm: The cut-over may have succeeded, but the new VM instance is throwing a tantrum: If the new VM on Compute Engine is misbehaving, show it the door by deleting the Compute Engine VM and reviving the source VM. This performance is affectionately known as “rollback”. Because undoing a migration is as complicated as untangling headphone wires, the rollback isn’t an automatic process. If you have to do a rollback, make sure to reroute traffic back to the source VM. Bear in mind that any data doodled on the Compute Engine instance won’t doodle back to the original source VM. Once the source VM is back in action, you can play detective and solve the migration mishap. After righting the wrong, kickstart replication again and give the migration another shot.
• The cut-over succeeded completely: If the cut-over is successful and the new VM instance is functioning correctly, your migration is considered complete once your validation results confirm the proper operation of the new VM.
• Finalize: After successfully executing the cut-over, you finalize the migration. Finalizing the migration involves deleting all replication data and all other storage resources linked to the migrated VM, and updating the VM’s state to Finalized. The replication data utilized to generate the Compute Engine VM is preserved post cut-over. This implies that you can utilize this data to generate extra instances of your migrated VM following the cut-over. Nonetheless, you aim to release the storage eventually in the finalize phase.

Migrate to virtual machines architecture

With Migrate to Virtual Machines, you can migrate VMs and disks from the following four migration sources to Google Cloud:

• AWS cloud service
• Azure cloud service
• Google Cloud VMware Engine
• vSphere data center (on-premises)

Conclusion

To sum up, transitioning to Google Cloud can revolutionize how businesses operate by providing advanced tools and services for enhanced scalability and efficiency. Moreover, the seamless migration process minimizes disruptions, ensuring a smooth transition. Additionally, robust security measures safeguard data integrity and compliance needs. In conclusion, the move to Google Cloud not only offers growth opportunities but also fosters innovation, positioning businesses for success in the dynamic digital realm.