All Products
Search
Document Center

Server Migration Center:Desktop migration

Last Updated:Mar 24, 2026

Server Migration Center (SMC) allows you to migrate desktop systems from physical servers, local VMs, and cloud services provided by third-party cloud platforms to Alibaba Cloud Elastic Desktop Service (EDS). EDS is an easy-to-use, secure, and efficient cloud desktop service. It supports fast creation and efficient management of desktop environments. You can use EDS to build a secure and flexible office system.

Scenarios

  • Migrate desktop systems from physical servers to EDS.

  • Migrate desktop systems from local VMs to EDS. Supported VMs include VMware, Xen, KVM, and Hyper-V.

  • Migrate desktop systems from Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances to EDS.

  • Migrate desktop systems from cloud services provided by third-party cloud platforms to EDS. Third-party cloud platforms can be Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Tencent Cloud.

Benefits

  • Migration without service interruption

  • Simple and flexible configuration

  • Secure data transmission

  • Resumable upload

Migration process

The following figure shows the process of migrating a desktop system from a physical server to EDS.

image

Limits

Source server version limitations

Currently, you can migrate only Windows source servers to EDS. The following versions are not supported:

  • Windows 8.1 and earlier

  • Windows 11

  • Windows Server 2016 and earlier

Disk size limitations

Server Migration Center (SMC) limits the size of disks that you can migrate from a source server. SMC cannot migrate a disk that exceeds the maximum supported size. For disks larger than the limit, you must transfer the data using other methods, such as cp or sftp.

  • System disk: The maximum supported size is 2 TiB.

  • Data disks: Data disks cannot be migrated; only the system disk is migrated.

Procedure

For more information about how to migrate a desktop system, see Migrate desktop servers to Elastic Desktop Service.