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    Server Migration Center:VMware agentless migration

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    Server Migration Center:VMware agentless migration

    Last Updated:Mar 24, 2026

    Server Migration Center (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. You do not need to use the SMC client. You can migrate multiple VMware VMs at a time.

    Scenarios

    • Migrate a single VMware VM from your local device to Alibaba Cloud

    • Migrate multiple VMware VMs at a time from your local device to Alibaba Cloud

    Benefits

    • Low costs

      You can reduce the infrastructure costs of your enterprises.

    • High security

      You can use the strong security technologies and powerful security capabilities of Alibaba Cloud to improve the security level of your enterprises.

    • High flexibility

      You can use the auto scaling feature to adjust storage capacity based on your business requirements. This way, your enterprise can be more flexible and adaptable.

    • Zero 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.

    • Zero concerns about business 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 migration.

    Migration process

    The following figure shows the process of migrating a VMware VM without agents.

    image

    Limits

    VMware environment requirements

    The following table lists the environment requirements for each OVA template.

    OVA template

    Connector requirements

    vCenter deployment

    Standalone ESXi deployment

    SMC VMware Connector 6.7 OVA

    • vCPU: At least 4 vCPUs

    • Memory: At least 8 GB

    • Disk: At least 40 GB

    • vCenter version: 6.0, 6.5, or 6.7

    • ESXi version of the host that runs the connector: 6.0, 6.5, or 6.7

    • ESXi version of the host that runs the VM to be migrated: 6.0, 6.5, or 6.7

    • Hardware version of the VM to be migrated: 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15

    • ESXi version: 6.0, 6.5, or 6.7

    • Hardware version of the VM to be migrated: 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15

    SMC VMware Connector 8.0 OVA

    • vCPU: At least 4 vCPUs

    • Memory: At least 8 GB

    • Disk: At least 40 GB

    • vCenter version: 6.7, 7.0, or 8.0

    • ESXi version of the host that runs the connector: 6.7, 7.0, or 8.0

    • ESXi version of the host that runs the VM to be migrated: 6.7, 7.0, or 8.0

    • Hardware version of the VM to be migrated: 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, or 21

    • ESXi version: 6.7, 7.0, or 8.0

    • Hardware version of the VM to be migrated: 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, or 21

    Disk size limits

    SMC limits the size of a single disk that you can migrate. If a disk exceeds the maximum supported capacity, you must migrate the data by using a different method, such as cp or sftp.

    • System disk: up to 2 TiB.

    • Data disk: up to 32 TiB.

    Procedure

    For more information about how to migrate VMware VMs to Alibaba Cloud without agents, see Migration guide.