Migrate VMWare workloads to IBM Cloud Red Hat OpenShift Planning

Phased Migration Approach

The migration of VMware workloads to IBM Cloud Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is proposed in a phased approach.

Migrate VMWare to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Phases
Migrate VMWare workloads to Openshift Virtualization phased approach

The phases and their key processes are:

Phase 1: Discovery and insights

  • Data is collected across the distributed landscape, VMware Clusters, operations, and service management processes. IBM AI-powered discovery and assessment tools can automate application to infrastructure resource mapping and affinity, and right-size the target landing zones.

  • Full VMware platform inventory and compute resource allocation is typically completed by using RVTools.

  • IBM AI-driven tools provides insights to right size the target landing zones and propose TCO optimization on the Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization platform.

  • The proof of concept (POC) use case is defined with success criteria such as performance and availability validation.

  • The proof of concept (POC) is built and completed.

Phase 2: Design and pilot

  • Delivery of design workshop with key infrastructure, operations, workload stakeholders.

  • The target platform design with performance, scalability, availability, security, regulatory, and compliance considerations is completed.

  • Disaster recovery planning based on RTO and RPO requirements is completed.

  • A migration strategy, program planning and detailed design solution, with low-risk migration and warm production cutover is completed.

  • Design, build, and run the pilot.

Phase 3: Build and code

  • Build target IBM Cloud Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization environment (compute, network, storage).

  • Connectivity linkage between the source VMware platform and the target Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization clusters.

  • Coding of pre-migration and post migration playbooks.

  • Coding of Day 2 service management playbooks.

Phase 4 Migrate and manage

  • Initial wave migrations for testing and development environments.

  • Validation of workload performance, placement policies, and the operational model is completed.

Phase 5: Scale and decommission

  • Complex wave migrations, including UAT environments that validate orchestration, integrations under production-like conditions.

  • Decommission VMware unused infrastructure, ensure the disposition of secure data, audit traceability, and compliance with retention policies.

Phase 6: Production cutover and decommission

  • Help ensure production cutover readiness, including business continuity and rollback processes.

  • Perform final cutover during agreed maintenance windows by using warm migrate method.

  • Retire residual VMWare assets.