Nutanix Technology Champion - Nutanix Solution Architect

Julien DUMUR
Infrastructure in a Nutshell
nutanix move

In the previous blog post, we saw how to create migration plans from ESXi to AHV. Now it’s Hyper-V’s turn and you’ll see that the process is almost identical!

Prerequisites

For everything to go well, some prerequisites must be taken into account and here are the 3 most important in my opinion:

All the prerequisites in the official documentation: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Nutanix-Move-v5_4:top-hyperv-vm-migration-c.html

Creating the migration plan from Microsoft Hyper-V to Nutanix AHV

On the Nutanix Move interface, click on the “+ New Migration Plan” button and name the migration plan:

Nutanix Move Create a Migration Plan button

Hyper-V to AHV migration plan name

On the next screen, you must choose the source cluster on the one hand, then the destination cluster with the associated Storage Container:

Choosing the source Hyper-V cluster, target cluster and storage container

Here, this gives:

  • 1 – HyperV Cluster
  • 2 – Nutanix Cluster
  • 3 – DefaultStorangeContainer

On the next screen, it’s time to choose the virtual machines you want to migrate by clicking on the “+” buttons at the beginning of the line. Here I will only pick one virtual machine that I know is not supported, to show the manual method:

Selecting the VMs to migrate from Hyper-V

Here, I chose to select the Ubuntu_4 and Windows_4 virtual machines.

On the next screen, it is the network mapping that needs to be done. For each network available on your Hyper-V cluster, you will need to assign a network from your Nutanix cluster:

Hyper-V to AHV network mapping

Here, I have only one network in my demo environment. If you have multiple networks on your Hyper-V cluster, you will need to create them all on the AHV side in order to achieve an identical mapping on both sides.

The next window allows you to configure the preparation of virtual machines.

Automatic preparation of virtual machines

The recommended mode is the automatic mode because Nutanix Move will take care of all the operations once the machine login credentials are configured.

Automatic VM preparation

Please note that automatic mode only works on operating systems fully supported by Nutanix Move.

To check if the operating systems of your VMs are supported, I advise you to look in the official documentation: https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documents/details?targetId=Nutanix-Move-v5_4:top-hyperv-vm-migration-c.html

You will then need to configure the identifiers of the Windows and Linux virtual machines:

Windows and Linux VM credentials for preparation

The general option is only valid if you have set the same username and password on all your virtual machines (example for Windows: the domain administrator account).

If this is not the case, you can customize all the settings per virtual machine by clicking on “Change settings” under “Override individual VM Preparation”:

Override individual VM Preparation option

Manual preparation of virtual machines

The overall configuration remains the same, but when configuring the virtual machine preparation mode if you choose Manual mode you will have a different page:

Manual preparation with the Windows and Linux scripts

No need to provide login credentials to virtual machines. On the other hand, all the automated preparation part carried out by Nutanix Move on your virtual machines will have to be done manually on each machine.

Nutanix Move provides scripts for Linux and Windows servers that you will have to run manually. A much more time-consuming option and source of potential errors that make me systematically prefer the automatic mode.

However, this migration mode may sometimes be necessary, particularly to migrate virtual machines whose operating system is not officially supported by Nutanix Move.

Finalizing the migration plan

On the next screen, the configuration of the virtual machines allows you to prioritize or not the migration operations, to choose the time zone that you wish to assign or even to schedule the start of the data transfer:

VM settings and data transfer scheduling

Don’t panic though, enabling data transfer does not mean that the machines will be migrated, simply the data of these machines will start to synchronize with the target cluster. This synchronization will continue as long as you do not trigger the migration.

Once your configurations are complete, Move will display a summary of your migration plan:

Hyper-V to AHV migration plan summary

Click on “Save” to validate it, your migration plan is ready and you can find it on the Nutanix Move home page:

Hyper-V migration plan on the Nutanix Move home page

Other migration plans can be created in the same way.

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