Server Migration Center (SMC) allows you to migrate VMware VMs to Alibaba Cloud without the need to install agents or modify the operating system settings of Server Migration Connector. This improves the efficiency of business migration to Alibaba Cloud and eliminates your concerns about business security and business performance during the migration. This topic describes the benefits, scenarios, and limits of VMware migration without agents.
Benefits
No resource consumption
The SMC client does not run inside VMs. Therefore, the migration does not consume the resources of VMs.
High migration efficiency
You do not need to separately install an agent for each VM. This reduces the costs of labor and time.
High security
No operations are performed within the operating system of a VM. This eliminates your concerns about security.
High compatibility
The migration does not depend on the internal environment of the VM operating system. This improves the success rate of the migration.
Scenarios
Scenario 1: Integrate cloud resources
You want to better integrate resources and improve efficiency, and maximize the use of cloud resources.
Scenario 2: Reduce costs
You want to reduce the costs of infrastructure and hardware, such as servers and storage devices.
Scenario 3: Improve security
You want to use the strong security technologies and powerful security capabilities of Alibaba Cloud to improve the security level of your enterprises.
Scenario 4: Improve flexibility
You want to use the auto scaling feature to adjust storage capacity based on your business requirements. This way, your enterprise can be more flexible and adaptable.
Features
VMware migration without agents
SMC allows you to migrate VMware VMs to Alibaba Cloud without the need to install agents or modify the operating system settings of Server Migration Connector. This improves the efficiency of business migration to Alibaba Cloud and eliminates your concerns about business security and business performance during the migration.
Incremental data migration from a VMware VM without an agent
SMC allows you to migrate incremental data from a VMware VM to Alibaba Cloud. You can specify the time interval between incremental migration jobs. Incremental data migration reduces the VM downtime and the total duration of the migration.
Migration process
The following figure shows the process of migrating an offline VMware VM to Alibaba Cloud.
Limits
The following table describes the environment requirements of different Open Virtualization Format (OVF) templates.
OVF template | Configurations of a Server Migration Connector | Environment requirements for deploying a Server Migration Connector on vCenter Server | Environment requirements for deploying a Server Migration Connector on VMware ESXi |
SMC VMware Connector 6.5 OVF |
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SMC VMware Connector 7.0 OVF |
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Supported cloud services
During VMware migration without agents, you may use other services or features along with SMC, such as Elastic Compute Service (ECS) and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) of Alibaba Cloud.
Service name | Relationship with other services or features | References |
During VMware migration without agents, you can first use the snapshots of VMware VMs to convert the VMs into ECS images. Then, you can generate ECS instances based on the ECS images. | ||
During VMware migration without agents, the system creates snapshots for VMware VMs in the intermediate stage. | ||
During VMware migration without agents, custom ECS images are generated based on snapshots to create ECS instances. | ||
You can use tags to manage and categorize migration sources and migration tasks. This helps simplify subsequent queries and batch operations. | ||
During VMware migration without agents, data is migrated over the Internet or in a VPC. | ||
RAM is a service that is used to manage user identities and resource access permissions. You can use RAM to control the operation permissions of users. This allows you to implement fine-grained permission management for SMC resources. |