IBM Cloud Docs
Migration tool

Migration tool

The IBM® Cloud Logs migration tool is a command line tool that you can use to migrate your IBM Log Analysis or IBM Cloud Activity Tracker instance configuration to IBM Cloud Logs.

The tool requires minimal user interaction. Cloud Identity and Access Management authentication and APIs are used to get the details about your current IBM Log Analysis or IBM Cloud Activity Tracker instance.

The migration tool migrates only configuration information. No data is migrated from IBM Log Analysis or IBM Cloud Activity Tracker instances to the new IBM Cloud Logs instances.

Overview of migrating to IBM Cloud Logs
Overview of migrating to IBM Cloud Logs

Migration tool use cases

You can use the migration tool for:

  • Planning your migration.

    You can collect information about IBM Cloud resources that are impacted by the migration in an account. The information that is generated includes information about current resources, and Terraform scripts for the new resources. You can use this information to find out what needs to be migrated and define a plan.

  • Migrating 1 instance and its subresources.

    When you migrate 1 instance, you also get information about current resources, and terraform scripts for the new resources.

  • Preparing the migration of IBM Log Analysis and IBM Cloud Activity Tracker instances in a region where IBM Cloud Logs is not available yet.

Using the migration tool

The migration tool is a CLI tool that can be used to migrate 1 or all IBM Log Analysis or IBM Cloud Activity Tracker instances in an account based on the existing IBM® Log Analysis or IBM Cloud Activity Tracker configuration.

You can use the tool to:

  • Migrate IBM Log Analysis and IBM Cloud Activity Tracker instance configurations.

  • Migrate IBM Log Analysis and IBM Cloud Activity Tracker resources such as views, dashboards, alerts, exclusion rules, archiving configuration and more.

  • Migrate the archiving configuration that is enabled in a IBM Log Analysis or IBM Cloud Activity Tracker instance.

  • Migrate alerting and configure the Event Notifications integration.

The tool generates exception reports that indicate items that cannot be migrated automatically and require manual steps. Exceptions can include:

  • Resources requiring user validation before migration. Examples of these include custom catalogs and IAM permissions.

  • Migrated resources that require more user tasks, such as regenerating API keys for new IBM Cloud Logs resources.

  • Resources that are not part of the migration tool, such as configuring a cross-account IBM Cloud Object Storage bucket or bucket outside of IBM Cloud.

Terraform artifacts are created that can be used to create new IBM Cloud Logs instances. Terraform on IBM Cloud enables predictable and consistent creation of IBM Cloud services so that you can rapidly build complex, multitier cloud environments by following Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles. Similar to using the IBM Cloud CLI or API and SDKs, you can automate the creation, update, and deletion of your IBM Cloud Logs instances by using the HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL).

Installing the migration tool

The migration tool is deployed as part of the logging CLI plug-in in IBM Cloud.

To install the logging plug-in, run the following commands:

ibmcloud plugin install logging

Only the current plug-in version and two previous versions are available at any time.