Supercharge Your VM Migrations to Nutanix AHV with Nutanix Move

In today’s hyper-dynamic IT landscape, as businesses pivot towards AI-driven workloads with containerization, co-existing with virtual-machine workloads, making the right foundational infrastructure choices is more critical than ever.  

Recent changes in the business and support dynamics by virtualization vendors has prompted organizations to reevaluate their software-defined datacenter strategy and seek alternatives, and freedom from platform lock-in. multicloud flexibility and simplified operations have become top of mind. The Nutanix Cloud Platform, with its built-in Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV), has become a proven choice for enterprises both on-premises and on the cloud with the Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) solution.

If you're considering a move, there’s no time like the present to explore the powerful combination of the Nutanix AHV hypervisor and the Nutanix Move Application Migration tool to meet these goals. 

Nutanix AHV for Enterprises 

Nutanix AHV is more than just a hypervisor; it's an integrated, enterprise-grade virtualization solution that comes included with the Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure offering with a growing adoption last reported at 89% of total cores. 

Here are some of the reasons why customers are increasingly choosing Nutanix AHV:

• Simplified Management: AHV is managed from the Nutanix Prism console, which provides an intuitive user interface and APIs to manage your entire infrastructure stack. Innovations in our management stack continue with Nutanix Central and Nutanix Cloud Manager for large enterprises to manage and monitor their infrastructure at scale. 
• Enterprise-Grade Security: AHV is built with a security-first mindset. With features like microsegmentation, vTPM support for modern OS requirements, and a hardened security posture, AHV helps you protect your critical workloads. The latest NCI 7.5 release has doubled down on integrated security for customers building Distributed Sovereign cloud environments. 
• High Performance and Availability: AHV includes features like automated high availability (HA) for VM recovery and Cross Cluster Live Migration (CCLM) to help your applications stay online and available with minimal disruption for continued business operations. Acropolis Dynamic Scheduler (ADS) optimizes VM placements and addresses resource contentions on your infrastructure.  
• Resilient Control Plane: The AHV control plane, with its stateless, distributed, architecture, is highly resilient in nature. AHV is designed to provide high availability for the clustered control plane to all hosts within the quorum and helps maintain system consistency for modern clustered workloads.
• Integrated Networking and Security with Flow: Nutanix Flow brings in Software-Defined Networking and Security capabilities to all workloads on AHV with features like Distributed firewalls for Microsegmentation and Virtual Private Cloud (VPCs) to enable cloud-like agility, simplified operations, and consistent protection and connectivity across your hybrid multicloud environments.
• Run your workloads on Cloud: With NC2, you can run your applications on AHV in AWS, Azure,Google Cloud and OVHcloud. This provides the flexibility needed to extend your on-premise infrastructure to the public cloud without needing to refactor applications. 

The NCI 7.5 Release is packed with powerful new capabilities on AHV and the broader Nutanix platform, making the switch to Nutanix even more compelling. 

Seamless Migrations with Nutanix Move

The Nutanix Move migration tool is designed to make the journey to AHV as smooth and low-risk as possible. It streamlines the migration process by automating complex tasks, handling driver installations, and ensuring data is transferred efficiently. It supports a wide range of use cases, from datacenter consolidations to full-scale cloud repatriations.

Addressing Migration Challenges with Nutanix Move

Migrations using MOVE provide a superior experience for customers due to the following reasons: 

• Minimal Downtime: Move pre-seeds data and performs delta syncs, delivering smooth cutovers with minimal business disruption.
• Test Migrations: Move can create Test VMs on the target site in an air-gapped network of the user’s choice. This lets the admins check if migrations are working, if a VM is powering up, if drivers are installed or if the application services are starting up. 
• No Refactoring Required: Applications can be migrated without code changes or re-architecture, preserving functionality and continuity of operations. 
• Migration Paths: Move supports migrations to AHV from multiple sources including environments running VMware to on-premises, edge and public cloud based Nutanix deployments. It also supports bidirectional migrations to and from native Public Cloud virtualisation like AWS EC2 and Azure VMs. 
• Intuitive Workflow: Wizard-driven UI and API automation make migrations simple and repeatable.
• Rollback Safety: Built-in rollback options reduces risk during cutover by preserving, but disconnecting and annotating the source VM.

What’s New in Nutanix Move 6.1

Nutanix Move has recently received updates that introduce several significant enhancements: 

Expanded Migration Paths to Cloud

Nutanix Move now supports two new critical migration paths:

• Microsoft Azure VMware Solution (AVS) to NC2 on Azure and AHV On-Premises
• VMware ESXi and Nutanix AHV On-Premises to NC2 on GCP 

External Storage Support

Aligning with the release of NCI 7.5, Move now supports the migration of virtual machines (VMs) from VMware to AHV utilizing external Pure Storage. This support is integrated directly into the platform, requiring no changes to the existing migration workflow. 

In-Place Cluster Conversion

A major enhancement is the introduction of the Move In-Place Cluster Conversion feature. This functionality enables clusters running VMware ESXi on Nutanix AOS to convert directly to Nutanix AHV without the need for an additional “swing kit” hardware requirement.

Key features of  the Move In-Place conversion process include:

• Guided Cluster Conversion Planning Workflow: A new, guided workflow (similar to the standard migration planning workflow) enables administrators to select nodes and VMs in a custom sequence, providing granular control over the conversion process.
• Automated VM Preparation: An important step in the process is the preparation of VMs to install necessary VirtIO drivers. This allows VMs to power on and operate immediately once the hypervisor changes from ESXi to AHV.
• Network Configuration: Factors such as retaining specific IP addresses, MAC addresses, and other configurations are facilitated through the Move In-Place cluster conversion process. 

Once the conversion plan is initiated, users benefit from detailed visibility into every stage of the process, complete with progress percentages and events monitoring. 

The Time to Modernize is Now

With the powerful proposition of the Nutanix Cloud Platform, including the AHV hypervisor, the simplicity of migrations with Nutanix Move, and the innovative new features in the NCI 7.5 release, there has never been a better time to break free from complexity and embrace an infrastructure platform built for the future by moving to the Nutanix Cloud Platform.

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