Flexible VM Migrations to the Nutanix Cloud Platform with Move DirectPath

For many years, the Nutanix Move migration tool has helped organizations streamline their path to the Nutanix Cloud Platform (NCP), supporting the migration of hundreds of thousands of virtual machines.

Designed to help make migration planning and execution simpler and more structured, Nutanix Move provides an orchestrated workflow that helps prepare, validate, and migrate workloads to NCP solutions. With the General Availability (GA) of Nutanix Move 6.3.3, a special Move release that includes the DirectPath capability, organizations have an additional capability designed to help simplify migrations from VMware vSphere environments.

This latest Move development is just the latest in a long line of new capabilities that has recently included support for additional public clouds, network policy migration, object storage migration and Zero Copy Migrations with Everpure.

An alternative approach to moving VM data

Migration workflows require software components to read virtual machine disks from the source environment. Many software products, Move included, have historically used the VDDK (Virtual Disk Development Kit) which is typically uploaded in a file format to the tool as part of connecting to the source environment.

With DirectPath, Move attaches a snapshot-based disk backing to the Move appliance as a local block device. Move then reads the disk directly and transfers the data and VM configuration to the target AHV environment. This approach eliminates the need to upload a separate file, streamlining setup requirements for migrating VMs with new Move deployments.

More flexibility for migration teams

Move DirectPath is designed to offer IT teams additional options when planning and executing supported migrations.

The capability:

• Is intended to simplify Move workflows by eliminating the need for adding additional software components.
• Supports block-level reads that are independent of the guest VM filesystem.
• Is designed to support both Windows and Linux virtual machines, subject to supported configurations.
• Uses the established Move workflow for migration planning, VM selection, validation, and execution.
• Is available in Move 6.3.3, a special release specifically for the ESXi > AHV and ESXi to ESXi on AOS

Planning for a successful migration

For DirectPath migrations, the Move appliance must be deployed on the source vSphere environment. The datastore containing the source VM disks must also be accessible from the ESXi host where Move is deployed. The target environment requires connectivity for AHV APIs and cluster storage access.

DirectPath applies to supported data-copy migrations. Other Move workflows may have different requirements or eligibility criteria, so administrators should always review the Nutanix Move documentation before creating a migration plan.

How Move DirectPath works

At a high level, the process includes three new steps:

1. Move creates or uses a snapshot-based copy of the source VM disk.
2. The snapshot disk backing is attached to the Move appliance.
3. Move reads the data directly and copies it to the target AHV environment.

After the data-copy operation is complete, Move detaches the snapshot backing from the appliance.

Streamlining your path to AHV

Nutanix Move is designed to help simplify workload migrations. With DirectPath available in the Nutanix Move 6.3.3 GA release, organizations migrating supported workloads from vSphere environments have access to a data-copy option that eliminates the VDDK upload requirement for eligible configurations.

Learn more in the Nutanix Move documentation.

Take Move for a Test Drive (This Drive features an earlier version of Move).

View the Move Product Page and Solution Brief