Manual AWS to AHV migration

By | November 7, 2018
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This is going to be the first of two blogs. This first blog will be the manual migration from AWS to AHV.  The second will use a product called Sureline.

Prerequisites

Make sure that you have an Amazon EC2 Windows instance that has a volume that is large enough to accommodate the size of the machine you are wanting to migrate. This secondary drive must be excluded from the conversion. Make sure VirtIO drivers are installed on the Linux Server or install the Nutanix drivers on the Windows system.

Procedure

  1. Install vCenter Converter Standalone on the Amazon EC2 Windows instance that you want to convert.
  2. Create a conversion task to import the source Amazon EC2 Windows instance as a Workstation destination:
    1. Start vCenter Converter Standalone on the Amazon EC2 Windows instance.
    2. Click Convert a Machine in the application menu to start the Conversion wizard.
    3. On the Specify Source page, select Powered-on machine from the Select source type menu and click This local machine.
    4. Click Next to proceed to the Specify Destination page.
    5. On the Specify Destination page, select VMware Workstation (Latest version) from the VMware product list.
    6. Type a name for the destination virtual machine and browse to the temporary volume that will contain the destination virtual machine.
    7. Click Next to proceed to the View/Edit Options page.
    8. On the View/Edit Options page, select Data to Copy in the list of options.
    9. Deselect the check box in front of the temporary volume to exclude it from the conversion task.
    10. Click Next to proceed to the View Summary page.
    11. Check the summary of the conversion task and click Finish to submit it to the tasks list.

    A*.vmx and a*.vmdkfile are created during the conversion.

  3. On the temporary volume/drive on the Amazon EC2 Windows instance, locate the VMware Workstation virtual machine files that were created during the conversion (the *.vmx and the *.vmdk file).
  4. You will need to transfer the VMware Workstation virtual machine files to a location that is accessible to your destination environment. You have several options to transfer the files:
    • Upload the files to a local FTP server using an FTP client.
    • Upload the files to an Amazon S3 server and download them to a location that is accessible to your environment.
    • Upload the files from the Amazon EC2 Windows instance to an Amazon S3 server and use Amazon AWS Import/Export to retrieve the data on a physical storage device.
    • Use a third party site like Box or DropBox to move the files.
  5.  Start Nutanix image configuration upload and conversion task to import the VMDK files into the AHV:
    1. On the PRISM main page, in the task icon pull-down list of the main menu, select Image Configuration.
    2. To upload an image file to the cluster, click the Upload Image button.
      1. Name: Enter Name of servers
      2. Annotation (optional): Enter a description for the image.
      3. Image Type: Select the image type Disk. 
      4. Storage Container: Select the storage container
      5. Image Source: Do one of the following:
        1. Click the Upload a file radio button to upload a file from your workstation. Click the Choose File button and then select the VMDK file to upload from the file search window.
      6. When all the fields are correct, click the Save button.
      7. Wait for the disk to finish uploading before moving to step 6.
  6. Create a New guest VM with the disk you just uploaded
    1. In the VM dashboard , click the Create VM button.
    2. Do the following in the indicated fields:
      1. Name: Enter a name for the VM.
      2. Description (optional)
      3. vCPU(s): Enter the number of virtual CPUs to allocate to this VM.
      4. Number of Cores per vCPU: Enter the number of cores assigned to each virtual CPU.
      5. Memory: Enter the amount of memory (in MiBs) to allocate to this VM.
    3.  To attach a disk to the VM, click the Add New Disk button.
      1. Type: Select the type of storage device, DISK, from the pull-down list.
        • Select Clone from Image Service. This will convert the disk that you have imported into an AHV the disk.
        • Bus Type: Select SCSI.
        • Image: Select the image that you have created by using the image service feature.
        • Storage Container: Select the storage container to use.
        • Size: Leave this blank.  It will automatically size the disk for your VM.
      2. When complete, click the Add button to attach the disk to the VM and return to the Create VM dialog box..
    4. Click the Save button to create the VM and close the Create VM dialog box.

The new VM appears in the VM table view.
You can start using the Windows instance after the image configuration conversion task is completed.

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