VMware Migration Examples
VMware migrations can take many different forms. But each form has its own limitations and features. We’ll talk about some of these limitations and features so you have a better idea for what each migration type does for a VMware product.
| Fully Supported Migration Requirements | Support Levels for Images on Target | |
| Traditional Migration | *Must have a control panel such as cPanel, Plesk, or Interworx with root access to the server. *The new VM can be on either a VMware Private Cloud or Multi-tenant environment. | *Fully-Managed Support only |
| VCDA Migration | *The source environment must have the ability to have the VCDA appliance installed. | *Self/Unmanaged Support only |
| Server Image (ISO, OVA, OVF) Migration | *Customer must provide the Server Image to the migrations team | *Self/Unmanaged Support only |
| NOTE: |
| For more information about site migrations in general, see Preparing For a Site Migration to Liquid Web. For more information about Support Levels, see Linux Scope of Support. |
Traditional Data Migration
Traditional data migrations are our most common data migration in the Web Hosting industry. In these types of data migrations, a new server is ordered and built or provisioned in our data center and the data from the source machine (the server that is going to be turned off) is copied to the target server (or the server that will be the data’s new home). The initial server operating system on the target is brand new with our proprietary software installed on it that allows it to communicate on our networks and allow for automatic updates and server monitoring. Traditional migrations allow us to bring over only your website’s data on a brand new system.
Data migration using VCDA
VMware Cloud Director Availability (VCDA) is a multi-tool for VMware migrations. It can create copies of individual VMs across different clusters for different purposes. For data migrations, it allows you to stand up a copy of a VM to another cluster and keep both VM instances synchronized. Because the source server is not a Liquid Web image template, we are not able to apply our Full support to the VM itself. Although, we will support the VMware platform and hardware that the VM is assigned to.
Because of the platform differences between Liquid Web’s VMware Private Cloud and Multi-tenant environments we are only able to use VCDA for data migrations coming to Multi-tenant environments from other VMware environments that have VCDA enabled. Because the systems coming to Liquid Web via VCDA may include software and setups that we do not support, we can not provide Fully Managed Support for these servers.
VCDA Requirements
- Source server must be using VMware and have the ability to install the VCDA tool.
- vSphere version must be version 5.5 or newer.
Server migration using ISO, OVA, or OVF files
Another method that we can use to migrate data into VMware is through a server image. These are large files and complete server images that are generated by the customer or their source hosting provider and then copied to the Liquid Web VMware environment. These copies can come in different formats such as ISO, OVA, and OVF files. There are other formats outside of these, but these are the most common when standing up VMware servers or apps.
Depending on the size of the server being copied, these files can grow to be very large files and difficult to transport from one host to another. If they grow too large, it may require a different migration method. That is one of the drawbacks of using server images to migrate data between the source and destination servers.
Similar to VCDA migrations, because this type of migration includes the entire server or VM, we are not able to guarantee support for it and it would be supported under our Self-managed guidelines.