Migration an On-Premise VM to Huawei Cloud using Server Migration Service (SMS)
Hello everyone! In today’s article, we are going to migrate a virtual machine with Windows OS to Huawei Cloud by using Server Migration Service of Huawei Cloud. This VM can be a machine running on Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESXI, Oracle VirtualBox or Huawei Fusion Compute. Let’s get started!
Introduction
Today, there is an increasing trend towards new virtualization technologies such as docker, the use of VM still has a serious usage rate. Virtual machines running on-prem are now gradually being moved to the cloud, saving companies from many burdens such as maintenance and management costs. The first priority in migration processes is to ensure that there is no data loss and that the entire system continues to operate smoothly. At this point, Huawei Server Migration Service provides users with this experience in the best possible way. Let’s take a closer look at the SMS service and perform the migration process through a demo.
What is the SMS service?
Server Migration Service (SMS) helps you migrate applications and data from x86 physical or virtual servers on-premises or in private or public clouds to Elastic Cloud Servers (ECSs) on Huawei Cloud.
How SMS works?
1.You install the Agent on a source server.
2. The Agent registers its connection status with SMS and reports the information about the source server to SMS. Then, SMS evaluates the feasibility of migration.
3. On the SMS management console, you configure the target server and start the migration.
4. The Agent executes the migration commands received from SMS.
5. The Agent starts to migrate data on the system disk from the source server to the target server.
6. The Agent starts to migrate data on data disks from the source server to the target server.
7.You launch the target server.
Demo
Step1: Logging into Huawei Cloud with our user account and create a new user group from the identity and access management service and add the following four policies from the authorize section.
-ECS Full Access
-SMS Full Access
-VPC Full Access
-OBS Operate Access
Step2: We add our own user to the user group we created.
The point we need to pay attention to here is that the required access type is programmatic and management console access.
Step3: We need to create a VPC/subnet and security group where our target ECS will run.
Important! If the target ECS runs Windows, enable TCP ports 8899, 8900
Step4: We download any of the Python2 or Python3 versions of the windows agents that we will use in our source VM from the agent section of our SMS page.
Note: Here we are going to use the SMS domain name at the bottom of the page in the next steps. So, we can save it to our local computer.
Step5: Now, Let’s get the AK/SK information required from the my credentials section and download it to our local computer in order to safely start the migration process via source VM.
Step6: In this step, we are going to connect to our source VM, then transfer the SMS-Agent tool and install it.
Attention! We need to pay attention to in this step is the time zone in the source VM is configured correctly. Otherwise, the migration will not be started.
Step7: Let’s enter AK, SK and SMS domain information and click the start button.
After seeing the text “Waiting for SMS instruction, go to the SMS console for the next step” in the log section, we will continue from there.
Step8: Here, we continue with the configure button, make the settings of the target VM to which the data in the source VM will be moved
Step9: We configure the basic settings according to the requirements and move on to the next settings page.
In this step, we select the region from which the migration will be perform and select a new target ECS or an ECS we have previously created. We are choosing a new ECS here. The region we choose determines how fast the migration will be. Therefore, it is necessary to select the closest region. Finally, we select the VPC, subnet and security group we created before and move on to the next step.
Now, we review the settings we have done and click save and start button.
The migration process has started. From now on, we need to wait for all data to be transferred successfully.
The steps taken are as follows;
Initial replication
Continuous sync
Finished
Step10: Now we can connect to our target VM and check that the migration has been completed properly.
Login the target VM
Enter the VM password
As you can see, the migration process was completed successfully and all our data was moved to the Huawei cloud without loss.
Conclusion
SMS automatically assesses whether source servers can be migrated and migrates only those servers that can be migrated. On the other hand, it identifies valid data by analyzing windows disk partitions and file systems. You can also synchronize incremental data after the migration. Apart from OS migration, you can also use SMS in workload and database migration scenarios.
In this article, we implemented the VM migration scenario, which is one of the most used scenarios, with Windows OS. This process can be done online/offline using Linux OS.
I hope it was useful!
