This topic describes the terms related to Server Migration Center (SMC) to help you understand and use SMC.
Terms
The following table describes the terms related to SMC.
Term | Description |
Server Migration Center | SMC is a migration platform provided by Alibaba Cloud. SMC offers migration services with universal capabilities, consistent experience, and high efficiency. This meets your migration needs when you use Alibaba Cloud services. For more information, see What is SMC? |
server migration | You can migrate servers in data centers, VMs, and third-party cloud servers to Alibaba Cloud with high efficiency. For more information, see Migrate servers to Alibaba Cloud. |
VMware migration without agents | SMC provides the non-intrusive migration technology to help you migrate VMware VMs to Alibaba Cloud without the need to install agents. This improves the efficiency of business migration to Alibaba Cloud and eliminates your concerns about business security and business performance during the migration process. For more information, see Migrate VMware VMs without agents. |
cross-zone migration | You can migrate Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances across zones within the same region with high efficiency. For more information, see Create a cross-zone migration task. |
operating system migration | You can migrate the operating systems of ECS instances from CentOS 7 or CentOS 8 to Alibaba Cloud Linux or Anolis OS. This improves the efficiency of replacing CentOS operating systems. For more information, see Migrate an operating system. |
desktop migration | You can migrate your source server to Alibaba Cloud WUYING Workspace. For more information, see Migrate servers to Alibaba Cloud EDS (in invitational preview). |
migration source or source server | Source servers can be servers in self-managed data centers, VMs, third-party cloud servers, or servers of other types. |
SMC client | The SMC client is a server migration tool developed by Alibaba Cloud. It is lightweight and free of installation. |
migration job | After you import the information about a migration source, SMC automatically generates a record for the migration source. You must create and start a migration job for the migration source in the SMC console. |
destination instance | When you create a migration job, you can select an ECS instance as the destination instance. After migration, the data on the source server overwrites the data on the destination instance. Important To prevent migration failures, do not stop, start, restart, or release the destination instance during the migration process. |
intermediate instance | To run a migration job, SMC creates a temporary intermediate instance named Important To prevent migration failures, do not stop, start, restart, or release the intermediate instance during the migration process. After the migration job is complete, SMC automatically releases the intermediate instance. |
ECS image | You can migrate a server to an ECS image and create an ECS instance based on the ECS image. |
container image | You can migrate a server to a container image and deploy containerized applications based on the container image. |
Related services
The following table describes the services that you may use in SMC.
Service name | Description | References |
ECS | After you migrate a server to an ECS image, you can create an ECS instance based on the ECS image. | |
Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) | You can migrate servers over a VPC. | |
Snapshot | During migration, SMC uses the snapshot service to generate an image from a source server. | |
Image | You can migrate a server to an ECS image and create an ECS instance based on the ECS image. | |
Container Registry | You can migrate a server to a container image and deploy containerized applications based on the container image. | |
Resource Access Management (RAM) | You can use RAM to grant permissions. |