Is there an easier way to migrate a workload into AHV?

By | March 31, 2017

DoubleTake, Sureline, VMware Converter, Disk2vhd

Over the last couple month I have been working on migration strategies for P2V and V2V into AHV (Nutanix Acropolis). During this time I found the following products:

  • Double Take
  • VMware Converter
  • Disk2vhd(Hyper-V)
  • Sureline

So here is the current break down.

Disk2vhd (Hyper-V)

This software works great for Physical to Hyper-V. It was originally published in 2014.

This software will work on the following systems:

  • Client: Windows Vista and higher.
  • Server: Windows Server 2003 and higher.

When you list those starting systems I want to get into the fetal position and forget about past experiences.

Price: Free

VMware Converter

This software works great for any Windows or Linux workload to ESX.  I am still looking for the first release date.

This software will work on the following systems:

  • Any Windows OS
  • Any Linux OS

This seems to be the overall winner to get window and linux machine into a virtual format.

Price: Free

Double-Take

The Double-Take 8.0 have many new features. See all the features here.

This software will work on the following systems:

  • Any Windows OS
  • Any Linux OS

In previous version you had to shutdown the machine, then migrate.  With the resent releases you can now migrate your systems live.

Price: Mover license per VM

Sureline

Sureline 4.8.2 has also just been released.  See all the features here.

This software will work on the following systems:

  • Windows Server 2003 and later
  • Oracle VM
  • Suse 11
  • Ubuntu 14
  • RedHat 5.4 and later (CentOS that coincides with the RH version)

The big key to Sureline is you can migrate the above machine to ESX, Hyper-V, AHV, Amazon, Google, etc.  They state they can migrate any server to any hypervisor/cloud provider.

Price: SureEdge license per VM

Findings

Each one of these migration softwares has a list of Pros and Cons.  So as everyone knows, Nutanix is also hypervisor agnostic. That means that Nutanix can run the following hypervisors: VMware, Citric, Microsoft, and AHV.  Nutanix  believes that any migration that can be done with tools provided by the destination hypervisor should be utilized. If there are no tools associated with a hypervisor, Sureline is the next best things.