In 2023, Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware and the flurry of changes that followed led to a lot of ambiguity for current users. What was happening with the licensing model? What did the product roadmap look like now? No one was quite sure, and they still aren’t.
The broader impact on the technology landscape has been many VMware workloads migrating to the cloud and adopting cloud-native alternatives. But no one said those migrations were going to be easy.
BlueXP™ workload factory has a migration advisor feature that can help you cut through the complexity. The migration advisor helps you plan VMware migrations to AWS using Amazon EC2 instances and optimized Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP (FSx for ONTAP) storage that aligns with infrastructure best practices.
In this post I’m going to deep dive into the workload factory migration advisor capabilities to show how it can help you plan a seamless migration from your on-premises VMware deployments to AWS.
Read on to learn how, here’s what we’ll cover:
- What makes VMware workload migrations so tough?
- BlueXP workload factory expedites VMware migration
- How the workload factory migration advisor works
- Getting started
- The Choose step
- The Prepare step
- The Scope step
- The Classify step
- The Package step
- The Review plan step
- Provision optimized storage infrastructure
- Streamline your VMware migration using the workload factory migration advisor
What makes VMware workload migrations so tough?
There are a number of factors contributing to the shift towards alternate solutions for VMware workloads in the wake of the Broadcom takeover.
Customers are worried about complexities associated with licensing costs and changes in the partner ecosystem. The lack of a clear roadmap has also made it difficult for organizations to commit to long-term strategies involving VMware products.
Another more general motivation to migrate is that VMware users want to modernize their compute infrastructure. AWS provides the means to do so, whether it’s to containerize existing applications, use function-as-a-service offerings, self-manage their databases, or for other use cases.
However, the process of migrating workloads from VMware also comes with its own set of challenges:
- Organizations could face lengthy planning cycles where potential errors can creep in—making a smooth transition an uphill battle.
- It isn’t easy to replicate the robust and enterprise-grade capabilities of VMware environments to every alternate solution.
- Finding support for a variety of workloads such as Microsoft SQL server in a Failover Cluster Architecture (FCI) could pose a considerable challenge during migration.
- Deploying workloads in the cloud cost effectively takes careful planning, or else you’ll open a hefty bill at the end of the month.
- Most organizations are under tight deadlines to exit VMware. They need solutions that can simplify the process and compress the timeline of migration. For instance, retraining users for use of the new platform can be a considerable effort, so finding a way to preserve existing workflows and knowledge can be key.
This is where the BlueXP workload factory can help.
BlueXP workload factory expedites VMware migration
Workload factory is a workload-oriented service that optimizes provisioning and operating FSx for ONTAP as data infrastructure for AWS workloads. By integrating design best practices into workflows and through auto-generated infrastructure-as-code (IaC) snippets, workload factory significantly reduces the time, effort, and costs associated with setting up and managing your AWS environments. This way, you meet your performance, security, and cost goals from day one.
For organizations migrating VMware workloads to AWS, workload factory offers invaluable support. It assists in assessing and planning the migration process, making for a seamless transition to native AWS environments using FSx for ONTAP at the storage layer.
Workload factory helps your migrated workloads meet your desired performance, security, and cost requirements, ultimately optimizing your AWS infrastructure for maximum efficiency and value. By getting it right the first time, workload factory helps eliminate the trial, error, and reconfiguration cycles that commonly occur in migrations due to planning inaccuracies.
How the workload factory migration advisor works
The workload factory migration advisor offers a centralized solution for assessing and analyzing your VMware environments, providing valuable insights into the optimal storage infrastructure using FSx for ONTAP once your migration takes place.
Let’s take a detailed look at how workload factory analyzes your current VMware estate and offers an optimized migration plan for bringing your VMware workloads to AWS.
Getting started
You can start the planning process for migrating your VMware workloads to native-AWS compute and FSx for ONTAP by selecting the “Migrate to AWS Compute” option in workload factory homepage.
Workload factory will then guide you through the steps for migrating your VMs to native AWS as follows.
1. The Choose step
The migration advisor starts by gathering comprehensive data about your current VMware configuration and performance. Workload factory collects your VM inventory configuration data for analysis in two ways:
- Quick assessment creates a design blueprint for your cloud migration and evaluates the usage for FSx for ONTAP. This option uses the well-known RVTools application to extract the source VM information. This option is best if you would like to do a quick initial assessment and get a high-level understanding of your required deployment, its cost structure, and cost optimization opportunities.
- Detailed planning creates a deployment-ready, well-architected design for your cloud migration. This option uses the migration advisor data collector built into workload factory, which is based on VMware PowerCLI, the command-line tool for vSphere. This option supports long-term data collection during which it collects performance and other runtime data. Detailed mode is suitable for customers who would like to create a more accurate and detailed design for their cloud storage architecture. This option will help them understand their detailed required architecture and find granular optimization opportunities.
For this example, we’ll choose the detailed planning option.
2. The Prepare step
In this window there are three tabs: VM configuration upload, VM inventory considerations, and target capacity and protection considerations. Each of these tabs can be expanded to see further details.
- VM configuration upload
To get started, expand the VM configuration tab. Download or copy the snippet from the Codebox to the right, and execute it. This will capture all your VM data to an inventory ZIP file ready for analysis. The collection synopsis and execution instructions are detailed in the main comment of the code. Next, upload the inventory ZIP file with the VM data.
- VM inventory considerations
Here you’ll need to select your AWS Region from a drop-down menu. This input is mandatory because each region offers different SKU configuration options to which the migration advisor will adjust the design accordingly.
- Target capacity and protection considerations
Here you’ll see the default target capacity and protection considerations parameters that were assigned according to industry best practices. You’ll be able to tune these inputs according to your best practices.
3. The Scope step
In this step the migration advisor shows the VMs that will be migrated. All the powered-on VMs are selected by default, but you can change the rules to select all the VMs, choose specific data centers, specific clusters, or manually search-for and select specific VMs.
4. The Classify step
A critical aspect of this analysis is evaluating your storage infrastructure. In this step, the migration advisor examines the virtual disks associated with your on-premises VMs and builds the FSx for ONTAP system’s deployment plan.
First, for the best cost savings configuration, the migration advisor assigns the best tiering policy for each volume—either all tiering for capacity-optimized volumes, auto tiering for standard volumes, or Snapshot-only for performance-optimized volumes. This assignment is based on the observed performance, SLA metrics, and other runtime data for that volume that were collected as part of the detailed planning option. The collected runtime data include the average and peak IOPS numbers, the average and peak throughput and service times.
Note that this automatic assignment is the case for the detailed planning assessment option. In quick mode, which does not collect performance data from your system, users are asked to estimate the average level of performance required for their VMs and assign volume class accordingly..
Then, the migration advisor classifies the VMs based on their performance needs. This classification determines the optimal storage configuration in AWS, combining Amazon EBS volumes (specifically gp3 type) for root disks, and iSCSI volumes on FSx for ONTAP for application data.
There are two reasons for this specific assignment configuration:
- Root disks and application data disks have different performance characteristics.
- Amazon EC2 instances require root volumes to reside on EBS (which is why FSx for ONTAP will only be used as data volumes).
Here you can see a summary of the planned EC2 volume assignments:
Scroll down to see the planned volume assignments:
The volumes are assigned according to classification logic:
5. The Package step
In this step you can review the recommended FSx for ONTAP deployment plan. It shows the number of file systems required, volume capacity, storage headroom, VM free space, and logical space.
Behind the scenes there is a lot going on here. Workload factory is taking the list of volumes assigned to FSx for ONTAP and the classification that was attributed to it in the Classify step and creating the optimal FSx for ONTAP deployment configuration for you. Building the FSx for ONTAP configuration takes into account four sizing factors:
- SSD capacity
- IOPS
- Throughput capacity
- Supported volume count
Each of those factors is configured in a way to sustain both average activity with headroom and also accommodate for peak activity as well as propose the best VM assignment in terms of pricing.
The table workload factory provides in this step (as seen below) shows a summary of the planned FSx for ONTAP file systems and their information. You can select one of the FSx for ONTAP systems to see its volumes, and attributes:
You can further expand to view the volume breakdown for each FSx for ONTAP file system, showing its source VMs, protection policies, volume capacity, and more.
6. The Review plan step
The migration advisor performs a comparison between the overall estimated monthly cost according to the plan, against an all-EBS configuration. The all-EBS configuration follows a similar pattern to that used in the FSx for ONTAP model, with io2 assigned for performance-optimized volumes, gp3 for standard volumes, and st1 for capacity-optimized volumes.
In this view you can see the total savings percent, the capacity details and savings, different cost dimensions, and design assumptions.
Scroll down to see the overall monthly cost components:
Scrolling down further, you can select each FSx for ONTAP system and examine its configuration, capacity and performance assumptions used by the migration advisor to create the plan for this FSx for ONTAP system.
Once you’re satisfied with the recommendations, you can download or export the plan and select Done. The plan will guide you through the deployment of your file systems, incorporating all best practices and configuration recommendations based on your analyzed on-premises VMware inventory configuration and requirements.
Provision optimized storage infrastructure
To create each one of the recommended FSx for ONTAP systems using workload factory, go to the workload factory Home page, browse to Storage, then select “Create file system”. Go to the “Advanced create” option and define the new FSx for ONTAP configuration with the recommended parameters that were provided in the migration plan.
Workload factory offers two options for provisioning:
- Workload factory UI: Accessing workload factory for the VMware migration advisor doesn't require credentials; however you will need the proper credentials in order to create FSx for ONTAP file systems directly from the UI. Refer to these detailed instructions on how to add your credentials.
- Infrastructure as code: Workload factory automatically generates IaC snippets in various formats (such as API, CloudFormation, and Terraform) for each supported flow. These code snippets are conveniently displayed on the right side of the screen in the Codebox and can be downloaded or copied for execution in your environment. This option doesn’t require assigning modify permissions to the workload factory.
Streamline your VMware migration using the workload factory migration advisor
The VMware takeover has led to migration roadblocks. But as you’ve seen, workload factory and its VMware migration advisor can be a valuable tool in simplifying and optimizing transitions from on-premises vSphere deployment to AWS.
By comprehensively analyzing the existing VMware estate, the workload factory migration advisor identifies potential challenges, classifies VMs and storage needs, and recommends an optimized and FSx for ONTAP deployment strategy to ease your migration and make sure it’s done right.
Workload factory can also help optimize other supported workloads you’re currently running on VMware that you’re moving to AWS. For instance, the database functionality can optimize your deployment in several ways, such as recommending configurations to reduce your Microsoft SQL Server licensing costs.
Workload factory is a free tool that requires no credentials to start with and delivers value from the get-go. To learn more, visit the BlueXP workload factory homepage or start BlueXP workload factory.