Shift Toolkit v8.0 marks an exciting step forward in expanding data mobility and flexibility across environments. This release introduces a set of powerful preview features designed to simplify migrations, broaden platform support, and deepen integration with cloud and Kubevirt ecosystems.
Quick Recap
In v7.0, Shift toolkit introduced support for
- End to End migration for Proxmox
- Conversion of disks for Proxmox
- ONTAP NAS Economy driver support for OpenShift migrations (qtree support)
- Support for multiple VMs on a single NFS volume for ONTAP NAS driver
- FlexGroup Support for VMDK to RAW conversion only (for KVM hypervisors)
Customers have been leveraging the Shift Toolkit to migrate VMs across platforms in a matter of days or weeks, delivering timelines far shorter than those seen with other solutions. As adoption continues to grow, so does the volume of feature requests.
Shift Toolkit v8.0 represents a major release, introducing a wide range of powerful new capabilities. These enhancements are designed to simplify mobility efforts while opening multiple pathways for destination environments, offering greater flexibility and choice.
File based storage to block-based LUN Migration (Preview)
One of the most anticipated enhancements in this release is File to LUN migration support. This capability enables organizations to seamlessly transition data from file-based storage to block (iSCSI LUN) storage. It allows you to take an existing file (from the FlexVol volume) and convert it into a block level LUN and the direct conversion preserves data layout.
Organizations planning to adopt OpenShift Virtualization can leverage this conversion approach to significantly accelerate their migration. For example, when the existing hypervisor is backed by block storage, migrating VMs using copy offload or the VDDK method can be time‑consuming and resource intensive. Instead, by storage vMotioning the VMs to an ONTAP-based NFS datastore, the Shift Toolkit enables migration with high parallelism into block storage on OpenShift Virtualization.
EC2 with FSx for ONTAP Support (Early Preview)
Shift Toolkit v8.0 also introduces support for migrating to AWS by converting the OS disks to EBS format and associated data disks to Amazon FSx for ONTAP. This expands Shift Toolkit’s reach into hybrid and cloud-native scenarios, allowing customers to leverage enterprise-grade ONTAP storage services directly in AWS. With this capability, users can efficiently migrate and manage data between on-premises environments and cloud deployments, ensuring consistency, scalability and cost efficiency. By utilizing ONTAP snapshots, SnapMirror replication, and Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP storage service, organizations can easily and quickly migrate VM workloads to Amazon EC2, eliminating the need for the time consuming copy processes typically required in traditional cloud migrations. The migration approach provides both AWS Import/Export APIs for import and Direct Access APIs for EBS snapshot creation as the options for OS disk conversions.
Note: To enable AWS EC2 as a target during the early preview phase, please contact our support distribution list at ng-shift-toolkit-support@netapp.com.
Shift as an Add-On for Trident (Preview)
OpenShift virtualization administrators will benefit from the introduction of Shift toolkit as an add-on for NetApp Trident (available with v 26.06), our CSI provisioner. This integration enhances data mobility within OpenShift virtualization environments by enabling seamless data movement alongside Trident’s dynamic storage provisioning capabilities. This integration enables zero-copy cold migrations, reducing downtime and accelerating data transfer.
More Enhancements
In addition to these key features, Shift Toolkit v8.0 includes other incremental improvements that continue to refine usability, performance, and integration capabilities. Together, these updates reinforce Shift toolkit’s role as a versatile toolkit for modern data movement and transformation.
Looking Ahead
While these features are currently in preview, they offer a glimpse into the future direction of Shift toolkit, focused on greater flexibility, cloud readiness, and deeper ecosystem integration. We encourage customers to explore these capabilities to help accelerate and enhance their migration timelines.
If you are using or planning to migrate VM workloads, Shift toolkit is here to help. Try it now for free.