Oracle Cloud Migration Service
- Subham Dutta
- Mar 21, 2024
- 6 min read
The Oracle Cloud Migrations service provides an end-to-end comprehensive self-service experience for migrating existing VMware virtual machine-based workloads from on-premises to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
Oracle Cloud Migrations enables you to identify virtual-machine workloads hosted in an environment external to OCI, plan migrations, and automate migration workflows.
The Oracle Cloud Migrations service enables you to perform the following tasks:
· Automatically discover virtual machines external to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
· Organize virtual machines for migration.
· Replicate the virtual machine data to OCI.
· Plan the redeployment of virtual machines.
· Reconfigure virtual machines to launch successfully as OCI compute instances automatically.
· Launch virtual machines as OCI compute instances using replicated data.
The Oracle Cloud Migrations workflow is based on the phases listed below:
· Discovery: In this phase an Oracle Cloud Bridge (OCB) virtual appliance, deployed in the on-premises environment performs discovery of VM assets in the source environment.
· Inventory: The Discovery is followed by the Inventory phase, where information about the discovered Virtual Machines is extracted & stored. This includes OS, Hardware & Utilization information regarding the collected assets.
· Assessment & Planning: Once the Inventory is available, we move to the Assessment & Planning phases to create the migration project and plan. The assets to be migrated are added to the plan in this phase.
· Replication: Replication of the nominated assets is initiated in this step. The OCB appliance is responsible for the replication of the VMs to OCI Object Storage.
· Execution & Migration: On successful completion of the VM replication, we migrate the assets to the target OCI environment and validate the migration assets.
· Cut-over and Cleanup: Once the migrated assets have been verified, we mark the project as complete and proceed with deletion of the migration project plan.
Pre-requisites:
Ø Considering the Landing zone has been created already. The admin should have unfiltered access to the tenancy and the tenancy should be in active state.
Ø Working Compartment. [Now the catch here is I created a OCM Migration Compartment beforehand and post running the script it actually created two compartments as child beneath the parent OCM compartment, so ideally you can create or leave it blank ]
Ø Proper IAM policy, since you need to have Dynamic Groups and other entities created . Proper IAM Policy [Script will do the major things, but before trying it in Customer environment, I tried it in GC3 labs and it failed due to certain permission issue.]
Ø vCenter permission, if you are doing it on Customer environment, they probably will have admin rights to the vCenter server which will be required.
Ø Supported vSphere version is 6.5 and above.
Ø OCM will use 3rd party VDDK (VMware Virtual Disk Development Kit) agent to perform the snapshot creation on VM Disk. You can download VDDK here. [Keep in mind, do not download the latest 7.0.3 , it will not work and not create agent dependency solved on OCI, got for 7.0.2 version only, it’s a stable one].
Ø Must Must [ Linux by default comes with Virt I/O but Windows don’t have Virt I/O package , hence Customer or you need to install Virt I/O on the Windows VM in on prem to be able to boot when it lands on OCI]
Ø Enable DISKUUID and CBT(Change Block Tracking) in all the VM for snapshot creation and change tracking for resync.
Steps :
Ø Create a compartment named “OCI_Migration” or “<Customername_Migration>”.
Ø Next go to Console-> Migration & Disaster Recovery -> Cloud Migrations and click on Pre-requisite.
It will take you to the Resource Manager Stack creation page.
Check the variable page and confirm, it will create required compartments, all IAM policies , permission, Vault, Bucket.
Post creation you can got to the OCM_Migration compartment and check the vault and Bucket. But remember if you have run the Pre req on the OCM_Migration compartment , the Bucket and vault will be created in compartment- Migration & Migration Secret under OCM_Migration.
Ø Post completion of the script, we need to create Source Environment in OCI Console. Source Environment will house all the Physical and Logical assets grouped together as fetched by the agent.
Ø Go to Console-> Migration & Disaster Recovery -> Cloud Migrations à Remote Connections à Source Environment.
Ø Once the Source Environment is active, we need to click on environment name and download the agent VM.
Ø Create an agent VM in the vCenter using the ova template downloaded.
Ø Parallelly, we can create agent dependency by downloading the VDDK 7.0.2 and store the same in Object Storage Bucket.
Ø Once Downloaded, go to Source Environment, Left corner down. Click on Agent Dependencies.
Ø Check the Deployment part in On premise vCenter. Make sure you follow the same:
The Agent VM should have two Deployed vnic with one external connectivity to OCI and internet and another with the internal environment. The VM should be deployed in the same environment where all the other VM’s are residing to do discovery. Check Network Connectivity in External Environment .
Ø Once the VM deployment is completed, we can do the registration of the VM in OCI Console.
Go to Migration & Disaster Recovery -> Cloud Migration-> Remote Connection -> Source Environment -> [<Your env name>] -> Register agent.
**The Port 3000 should be open for the connectivity.
Ø Once the agent has been registered, it will show the status of the agent in the OCI console under source environment.
Check the Plugins and its health by clicking on the Remote agent name.
Ø Before configuring the asset for discovery, we have to go to Vault and provide credential of the Vcenter server to create connection with Vcenter and OCI to fecth the details and start replication.
Ø Got to Vault and choose appropriate compartment like “migration-secret” and click on already created vault using script and go to secret key and create secret. Example: {"username":"VC Oracle Cloud Migrations user name","password":"password"}.
Ø Once the agent registration is complete and status turns healthy, we need to now discover the on premise assets. For that follow:
Ø Make sure that you use FQDN name of the Vcenter server not the IP address, then it will fail and use 443 and /sdk.
Ø Once connection is set, we can go to the asset source and click on Run Discovery to fetch and discover the On premise VM’s.
Ø Once the asset discovery is in progress, you can check the asset discovery progress and asset discovered by going to the Cloud Migration-> Discovery -> Asset source name -> asset source details -> left corner down (Assets).
Ø Once the asset has been discovered , we will proceed with the Migration project creation.
Ø We can create Migration Project by going to Cloud Migration -> Migrations -> Create Migration project .
Ø We need to create Migration Plan, where we need to put Name, compartment name, target Compartment name, VCN & Subnet .
Ø Once Migration plan creation plan is successful, we need to add asset to the Migration plan. You can plan likewise to add all the asset or couple of them to test first and then remaining at one shot.
Ø Once the add migration wizard, add the VM that you want to migrate in 1st phase or all the VM’s whichever suits, Once selected click on Add migration assets. Then Click Next-> and select AD, Compartment, Object Storage Bucket and click Submit.
Ø Once the asset has been added to the plan , go to Assets and click on the VM and from action dropdown, Click Replicate.
Ø You can check the status of replication from the Work requests tab below Migration assets.
Ø Here we got stuck and our replication failed once with below error
It means the replication is failing due to “quiescing error in OS”.
We can follow following KB to resolve this
It says to disable application level quiescing while taking snapshots of the VM if the VM is live.
Ø Once the replication is complete, we can go to Target asset section under Migrations & Discovery -> Cloud Migration -> Migration Projects -> Project name -> Migration plan -> Migration plan details -> Got to Target assets left side down.
Ø It will showcase the VM target and will give system recommended Shape , if you want to configure as per the requirement , you can do that by going to the configuration of the VM.
Ø Once the Configuration is complete, we can deploy the same as RMS Stack by clicking on the Generate RMS stack and once that is finish , click on Deploy RMS stack which will create the VM in desired compartment.
Ø Once the VM is up, you can login to the VM and make sure you go to Disk management and make the D drive online as it will be in Offline state, once you do the same , it will come online and parallelly you can view the Drive in OCI Console as well.
Ø Once the Migration is complete, mark the migration as complete which will break the sync with the Source environment. This should be done post validation by the application team.
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