Intro
In this blog, we explore the latest release of the NetApp Shift Toolkit, our fast, efficient and free offering that leverages native ONTAP goodness to simplify hypervisor platform changes. Shift might sound familiar and that’s because it builds upon proven, mature ONTAP capabilities like NetApp FlexClone. This easy-to-use tool supports the migration and conversion of VMs and disks, saving you time and money whether you need to convert a few VMs or hundreds.
Why Should You Care?
With recent changes in virtualization licensing models, countless organizations are seeing the benefit of embracing multi-hypervisor environments to manage rising costs. Many customers have the bulk of their virtualization infrastructure on VMware and for them, this shift (pun intended) often means moving to another platform. Historically, this has been a complex and time-consuming task, especially with non-NetApp arrays. However, with ONTAP’s capabilities, these migrations can be incredibly swift, with minimal downtime. For instance, converting a large virtual disk, including the largest 62TB VMDK file, typically takes hours or even days, but with the Shift Toolkit, it can be done in seconds. Not only that but the conversion time is the same whether you are doing a single VM or many in parallel.
What is the NetApp Shift Toolkit?
Let's go a bit deeper into the underlying technologies, given this is a Tech ONTAP blog. But first let’s talk about what Shift does. Shift is an easy-to-use GUI driven utility. Shift provides flexibility in a multi-hypervisor environment through two primary use cases:
- Bidirectional conversion between hypervisors:
- VMware ESXi to Microsoft Hyper-V
- Microsoft Hyper-V to VMware ESXi (Upcoming release)
- Disk-level conversions between hypervisors:
- VMware VMDK to Microsoft Hyper-V VHDX
- VMware VMDK to KVM-compatible hypervisors leveraging QEMU (QCOW2)
What is the Underlying Technology to Make This Happen?
The star of our show is ONTAP and FlexClone. ONTAP is known for industry leading storage efficiencies, and a big part of the story is FlexClone. FlexClone creates writable, point-in-time copies of the parent data, sharing the same blocks for common data. This functionality can be taken advantage of at the volume or file level. FlexClone allows you to copy even the largest datasets almost instantaneously, without consuming additional storage. Who doesn’t love that?
More information about NetApp storage efficiencies, see ONTAP Storage Efficiency Overview.
FlexClone and Shift – How Does It Work?
During the conversion process, Shift establishes connections with the NetApp shared storage and both the VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V hosts. It uses FlexClone to convert VM hard disks from one hypervisor to another quickly and efficiently. Shift also leverages ONTAP’s unified storage model, allowing access to an NFS volume from vSphere and presenting it to Hyper-V via CIFS/SMB. Automated workflows make the migration process painless for administrators.
For the administrator, the process is intuitive and easy to follow. First you discover the source and destination sites. Next, create resource groups and a blueprint for the VMs to be migrated or converted. Finally execute the migration or conversion and monitor the status through the dashboard. As part of the process, a snapshot is taken to protect the original VM format in the event you need to roll back.
What is the Benefit to the Administrator?
Did I mention how much of a hassle this would be without Shift? We have mentioned some of the cost and time savings but let’s hit on additional benefits:
- Cross-Hypervisor Magic: We mentioned the time savings with the act of migration but what about not having to worry about compatibility issues or spend hours reconfiguring the environment. The conversion is quick and painless and so is presenting the VM to the new hypervisor.
- Flexibility in operations: The conversions are done in parallel and can be batched and grouped, allowing you to conduct migrations on your schedule.
- Data Integrity: Shift ensures data remains consistent and intact, with no data being copied over the network. VMs that are being migrated, need only be powered off during the conversion process, while the non-migrated VMs in the datastore are not affected and remain accessible.
- Automation for the Win: In any large-scale migration, the potential for error is huge. Shift automates much of the migration work, speeding up the entire process and reducing human error.
- Silo buster: With no storage islands, you can choose the best ONTAP-based environment for your needs based on performance, cost, or other criteria. NetApp also offers unmatched cloud options, allowing migration to the public cloud with enhanced ONTAP capabilities.
What’s the Catch?
So, what’s the catch? Good question. There are a few standard, lightweight prerequisites, such as needing a VM for the Shift server host and configuring the ONTAP storage virtual machine (SVM) to support multiple protocols. The primary limitation though is that the Shift Toolkit is currently designed migrations involving NAS datastores. However, NetApp and the Shift Toolkit can still help. As such, the workflow for an administrator would be to change the underlying storage from VMFS on SAN to NFS with a simple Storage vMotion. Next using Shift, FlexClone migrates the VMs near instantly to the new hypervisor as described above. Finally use Microsoft Storage Live Migration to move VMs to SAN if needed. This approach still helps reduce configuration time and storage costs vs leveraging a 3rd party tool and having to buy additional temporary storage to handle the migration.
For additional requirements, see the Shift Toolkit documentation.
Final Thoughts
NetApp has helped tens of thousands of customers reduce costs through ONTAP’s storage efficiency features. Storage efficiency is a core part of NetApp's value, and FlexClone plays a crucial role. Many customers need to reduce their virtualization infrastructure licensing costs, and adopting a multi-hypervisor strategy can help. With Shift, we apply our legacy of storage efficiency to this migration use case.
NetApp Shift simplifies complex migrations, ensures data integrity, and gives you the flexibility to choose the best environment for your needs. Whether you're a seasoned IT pro or just starting out, NetApp Shift is here to make your life easier.
Get started with the resources below:
- Refer to the following blog for more how-to's: Effortless VM Migration: Hypervisor hopping with instant cloning and zero data copy.
- Download the Shift toolkit package today from NetApp Toolchest.
- Try Shift yourself with the following walkthrough: Shift Toolkit Simulator.
