About migration
Your decision to migrate can be driven by many factors, such as modernization, cost savings, consolidation, or closing a data center. You can also migrate to better align applications with cloud environments or to adopt new technologies like IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud. No matter the reason, a migration can range from something as simple as migrating a single virtual server instance to something much more complex, such as migrating an entire application environment, pod, or full data center along with all its supporting components.
Migration approach
| Step | Description |
|---|---|
| Assess | Do you need to migrate instances to a new data center due to data center closures? Do you want to migrate your entire IBM Cloud® classic infrastructure to VPC? Assess your situation and identify your existing infrastructure to determine
what components you have, how they are configured, and what you want to migrate. Not only do you need to assess your current environment, but you need to assess the target environment to understand the capabilities, support, and differences between the two environments, if applicable. In this assessment step, you can get a general idea of the complexity of the migration so that you can develop a migration strategy. |
| Plan | Audit your existing infrastructure to assess which resources and components can be migrated and what dependencies exist between them. Estimate the potential impact on running services, including expected downtime and effects on connected systems, to understand the level of disruption the migration might cause. Use this information to decide whether a phased or all-at-once approach makes more sense for your team's capacity and the complexity of your environment. |
| Migrate | After you assessed your existing infrastructure and planned for your migration, you can migrate your resources and components with ease and confidence. Depending on your migration needs, you can choose from tools that are available to help you with the migration process. |
| Validate | After you migrate your resources and components into your target infrastructure, and before you make your infrastructure live, validate and test your environment to make sure it is ready for production. This activity might also entail updating your DNS and global load balancers, routes, or retiring old services. |
Migration solutions
Review the following table to identify the migration solution that best fits your migration needs.
| Solution | Bare metal to bare metal | Bare metal to virtual server | Virtual server to virtual server | Block or File storage | Network |
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| VPC+ Cloud Migration | |||||
| RMM |  |
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| DIY automation | |
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| Custom image templates | |
| Solution | Bare metal to bare metal | Bare metal to virtual server | Virtual server to virtual server | Block or File storage | Network |
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| VPC+ Cloud Migration | |
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| RMM | |
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| DIY automation | |
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| Custom image templates |
| Solution | Bare metal to bare metal | Bare metal to virtual server | Virtual server to virtual server | Block or File storage | Network |
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| VPC+ Cloud Migration | |||||
| RMM | |
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| DIY automation | |
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| Custom image templates |
RMM supports only Block Storage for Classic migration and not File Storage for Classic.
VPC+ Cloud Migration
If you want to migrate your IBM Cloud classic infrastructure (compute, network, and storage) to VPC, you can use VPC+ Cloud Migration. VPC+ Cloud Migration is a third-party, software-based migration-as-a-service solution, provided by Wanclouds, for migrating components from classic infrastructure to your VPC. With VPC+ Cloud Migration, you can discover and choose resources for migration, create, and set up those resources in your VPC environment. You can also run and manage your VPC environment from within the tool.
You can migrate the following key elements of IBM Cloud classic infrastructure to VPC:
- Subnets
- Virtual server instances
- Dedicated hosts
- Storage volumes (primary and secondary)
- Security groups
- Load balancers
- Firewall configuration - Access control list (ACL)
- VPN configuration
- SSH keys
- Public gateway
For more information, see Getting started with VPC+ Cloud Migration.
RMM
RackWare Management Module (RMM) is a third-party solution (provided by RackWare) that provides an automated and convenient process to migrate existing compute workloads to IBM Cloud. With RMM, you can create an exact duplicate of a running source image without the burden of rebuilding or re-creating template images and applications. Migrating large, complex environments through a simple intuitive user interface and automated tasks reduces the time that is required from weeks to days. The application tracks data changes on the source until the cutover, and performs delta syncs to the target server in IBM Cloud. Additionally, it helps you with automated wave planning for migrations that can be further customized.
Classic to classic infrastructure migration
You can use RMM solution to simplify the overall bare metal to bare metal migration process. The solution simplifies the process by moving the operating system, applications, and data from one bare metal server to another bare metal server in the IBM Cloud classic environment. The migration can occur either over the public or private interface of the compute resource.
A similar architecture diagram is applicable for 'Bare metal to virtual server' and 'Virtual server to virtual server' use cases within classic infrastructure migration.
Review the following migration considerations and limitations:
- The RMM server is installed on a virtual server instance and is a GUI-based tool.
- The RMM server needs to be able to access both the source and target server over SSH.
- This offering is a bring-your-own-license (BYOL) solution.
- Only compute resources are migrated, along with secondary volume, and secondary block volumes.
- The RMM tool tracks the data changes on the source server until cutover, and performs delta syncs to the target server.
For a detailed step-by-step guide, see IBM Cloud classic bare metal to classic bare metal migration.
For frequently asked questions and answers, see FAQs for classic bare metal to classic bare metal migration.
Classic to VPC infrastructure migration
You can use RMM solution to migrate your classic bare metal server to an IBM Cloud VPC virtual server instance or bare metal. By migrating from bare metal servers to virtual servers or bare metal, you can modernize your environment and adopt virtualization.
A similar architecture diagram is applicable for 'Bare metal to bare metal' and 'Virtual server to virtual server' use cases for classic to VPC infrastructure migration.
Review the following migration considerations and limitations:
- The RMM server is installed on a virtual server instance and is a GUI-based tool.
- The RMM server needs to be able to access both the source and target server over SSH.
- When you place your order, you get a 3-month promotional license, then you must use BYOL.
- Only the compute resources are migrated, along with secondary volume and block volumes.
- The RMM tool tracks the data changes on the source server until cutover, and performs delta syncs to the target server.
- This migration is nondisruptive.
VPC does not have support for snapshot, replication, and shared volume. You can manage these solutions through the native OS capabilities, tools, or third party of your choice.
For more information, see Bare metal to bare metal or virtual server migration overview.
For a detailed step-by-step guide on moving your IBM Cloud classic bare metal servers to VPC, see Bare metal to virtual server migration on a private network by using RMM.
For frequently asked questions and answers, see FAQs for RackWare.
On-premises to VPC infrastructure migration
You can use RMM solution to migrate your on-premises workloads to IBM Cloud VPC.
This architecture diagram is applicable for bare metal to bare metal, bare metal to virtual server, and virtual server to virtual server scenarios.
For a detailed step-by-step guide, see VMware VM on-premises to IBM Cloud VPC with RMM.
For frequently asked questions and answers, see FAQs for VMware (on-premises and classic) to VPC migration.
Cloud to VPC infrastructure migration
You can use RMM solution to migrate from other cloud providers to IBM Cloud VPC.
You can migrate your workloads from the following cloud providers:
- AWS
- Azure
- GCP
- OCI (bare metal)
For a detailed step-by-step guide, see AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI workloads to IBM Cloud VPC.
DIY automation
Several do-it-yourself (DIY) automation scripts are available to migrate workloads and data to IBM Cloud. The automation scripts are starter scripts that you can modify or adapt to your environment.
Because these scripts are open source and available at no charge, no support or SLAs are offered. For more information, see Getting help and support for image and data migration.
The following DIY automation scripts are available for you to use:
| Tool | Description |
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| Virtual server preparation and validation tool |
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| Image conversion tool |
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| Data migration tool |
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Custom image templates
By using a custom image template, you can capture a classic bare metal image. You can use the custom image to order more classic bare metal servers with the exact same configurations, and you can deploy as many servers as needed.
With this type of classic bare metal to classic bare metal migration in IBM Cloud classic infrastructure, you need to review the following considerations and limitations:
- Only compute resources and secondary volumes are migrated.
- Custom images are not meant for backup.
- Custom images can be used for disaster recovery.
Classic bare metal to classic bare metal migration is disruptive to your workload, so be sure to plan ahead.
For more information, see About bare metal custom image templates.
Next steps
If you are migrating from classic infrastructure to IBM Cloud VPC, see Classic to VPC Migration for a dedicated guide that covers migration decisions, solutions, prerequisites, discovery of classic resources, and step-by-step migration guidance.
- Contact your IBM Cloud Customer Success Manager (CSM) or IBM Cloud Seller for planning, migration assistance, and other queries.
- If you don't have an assigned CSM or IBM Cloud Seller, IBM reaches out to the primary contact in the account through email.