Objectives

After completing this section, you should be able to describe how virtual machines and networking are migrated from a VMware ESX environment to KVM hypervisors and RHV Manager.

Introducing the Infrastructure Migration Solution

Over the last decade, cloud migration rates have increased as organizations recognize the value of re-engineered applications and advanced hybrid cloud architectures. Red Hat customers working toward an infrastructure where workloads and resources span physical, virtual, and cloud-based environments, must migrate away from legacy virtualization solutions.

To help address this need, Red Hat created the Red Hat infrastructure migration solution (IMS), an enterprise-ready utility for migrating VMware ESX-based enterprise workloads to advanced Red Hat technology destinations, including Red Hat Virtualization, Red Hat OpenStack Platform, Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure for Virtualization, and Red Hat Virtualization for Cloud. Workload migration provides the pathway to cloud-native application development via Linux containers, Kubernetes, automation, and other open source technologies.

The Phases of Migration

IMS is designed to safely manage and migrate VMware ESX-based workloads to an open source infrastructure platform. A standard migration consists of three phases:

Open Source Platform Destinations

After the Discovery Session, recommendations are provided for a more flexible open source virtualization platform based on Red Hat technologies, including:

IMS is based on Red Hat management technologies, including Red Hat Ansible Automation and the Red Hat CloudForms management platform, built on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) technology. Existing workloads are analyzed and migrated in a controlled manner designed to successfully preserve workload-specific business requirements.

Container Native Virtualization (CNV)

During an infrastructure migration, some applications may run more efficiently in containers, which in some cases can help to eliminate the need for legacy virtual machines. For these scenarios, the Red Hat infrastructure migration solution provides the path to adopt Linux containers and Kubernetes orchestration via Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform as the common hybrid cloud platform. Red Hat OpenShift simplifies the migration of existing applications to Linux containers, enabling organizations to benefit from cloud-native workloads as a final migration destination.

Red Hat is developing platforms to merge distinctions between virtual machines and containers. Red Hat CNV, based on the open source KubeVirt community project, enables developers to work with VMs in the same way that they work with Linux container-based applications, thus eliminating the current legacy and microservice application development silos.

Preparing For Infrastructure Migration

This section overviews an IMS deployment and virtual machine migration steps. It is not intended to cover all use cases. Typical large migrations require preparation, such as mapping networks and resources in the source environment to the RHV destination. Only a migration to Red Hat Virtualization is discussed, as is appropriate for this course.

The minimum product versions required to run the solution are the following:

The software to install on the machines is obtained from the following Red Hat repositories:

Enabling Red Hat Virtualization as a Migration Target

Figure 11.0: Red Hat Virtualization VM migration workflow

RHV Conversion Host Requirements

To perform the VM conversion tasks during migration, a conversion host is required. For Red Hat Virtualization, the architectural choice is to use RHEL Hypervisors as conversion hosts.

Add a vSphere Virtualization Provider

In CloudForms, locate the infrastructure providers window to add a new provider. The provider type is VMware vCenter, and requires you to enter the vCenter host name and an administrators username and password. Before completing the addition, use the Validate button to check for successful access. Once validated, the Credential validation was successful message displays. Finally, click the Add button finish the addition.

Figure 11.1: Add vSphere to CloudForms

Add an RHV Virtualization Provider

Add a the RHV environment as an infrastructure provider. The provider type is Red Hat Virtualization, and requires you to enter the RHV-M host name, and an administrators username and password. Additionally, deactivate the Verify TLS Certificates and use the Validate button to check for successful access. Once validated, the Credential validation was successful message displays. Finally, click the Add button to complete the addition.

Figure 11.2: Add RHV to CloudForms

Adding Credentials to a Conversion Host in RHV

In CloudForms, existing RHV hosts were discovered by adding the provider. Selected hosts have significant physical resources to perform migration disk conversions. Locate the Hosts window, and supply a privileged username and password. Validate successful access, and then save the configuration. Perform this step for each RHV host and ESX host that is involved in the migration.

Figure 11.3: Adding credentials to conversion host in RHV

Installing Tools in Conversion Host in RHV

The conversion hosts require additional software installations. An Ansible playbook is provided, which requires an inventory file, similar to the following:

[root@workstation ~]# ssh rhvm
[root@rhvm ~]# cd /usr/share/ovirt-ansible-v2v-conversion-host/playbooks
[root@rhvm ~]# cat conversion_hosts_inventory.yml
all:
  vars:
    ansible_ssh_private_key_file: /etc/pki/ovirt-engine/keys/engine_id_rsa
    v2v_repo_rpms_name: "rhel-7-server-rhv-4-mgmt-agent-rpms"
    v2v_repo_rpms_url: "http://storage.example.com/repos/rhel-7-server-rhv-4-mgmt-agent-rpms"
    v2v_repo_srpms_name: "rhel-7-server-rhv-4-mgmt-agent-source-rpms"
    v2v_repo_srpms_url: "http://storage.example.com/repos/rhel-7-server-rhv-4-mgmt-agent-source-rpms"
    v2v_vddk_package_name: "VMware-vix-disklib-6.5.2-6195444.x86_64.tar.gz"
    v2v_vddk_package_url: "http://storage.example.com/repos/VMware-vix-disklib-6.5.2-6195444.x86_64.tar.gz"
    manageiq_url: "https://cf.example.com"
    manageiq_username: "admin"
    manageiq_password: "redhat"
    manageiq_zone_id: "1"
    manageiq_providers:
      - name: "RHV"
        connection_configurations:
          - endpoint:
              role: "default"
              verify_ssl: false
  hosts:
    kvm1.example.com:
    kvm2.example.com:
      v2v_host_type: rhv
      v2v_transport_methods:
        - vddk
      manageiq_provider_name: "RHV"

A conversion_host_check.yml playbook is provided to verify proper installation. Use the conversion_host_enable.yml playbook to install the necessary tools, and then use the host check playbook to verify the installation.

[root@rhvm ~]# cd /usr/share/ovirt-ansible-v2v-conversion-host/playbooks
[root@rhvm ~]# ansible-playbook --inventory-file=conversion_hosts_inventory.yml conversion_host_enable.yml
[root@rhvm ~]# ansible-playbook --inventory-file=conversion_hosts_inventory.yml conversion_host_check.yml

When the conversion host software is properly installed, the conversion host is found in the vmdb on the CloudForms host. SSH into the CloudForms host and query the database.

[root@cf ~]# vmdb
[root@cf vmdb]# rails c
** CFME 5.10.0.29, codename: Hammer
Loading production environment (Rails 5.0.7.1)
irb(main):002:0> pp ConversionHost.all
[#<ConversionHost:0x0000000000a23e88
  id: 1,
  name: "kvm2.example.com",
  address: nil,
  type: nil,
  resource_type: "Host",
  resource_id: 4,
  version: nil,
  max_concurrent_tasks: nil,
  vddk_transport_supported: true,
  ssh_transport_supported: false,
  created_at: Tue, 15 Jan 2019 14:44:53 UTC +00:00,
  updated_at: Tue, 15 Jan 2019 14:44:53 UTC +00:00,
  concurrent_transformation_limit: nil,
  cpu_limit: nil,
  memory_limit: nil,
  network_limit: nil,
  blockio_limit: nil>]
=> #<ActiveRecord::Relation [#<ConversionHost id: 1, name: "kvm2.example.com", address: nil, type: nil, resource_type: "Host", resource_id: 4, version: nil, max_concurrent_tasks: nil, vddk_transport_supported: true, ssh_transport_supported: false, created_at: "2019-01-15 14:44:53", updated_at: "2019-01-15 14:44:53", concurrent_transformation_limit: nil, cpu_limit: nil, memory_limit: nil, network_limit: nil, blockio_limit: nil>]>

Notice the transport methods and concurrent task settings at the bottom of the output. There are two choices for supported transport methods:

Adding Ansible Playbooks

The final preparation step is to install the IMS migration and conversion Ansible playbooks onto the CloudForms system. The CloudForms system must be configured to enable the Embedded Ansible role on the EVM Configuration screen. It may take up to ten minutes to enable this role, configure the feature, and start the Embedded Ansible Worker service.

The Ansible playbooks perform the migration tasks by copying virtual machine disks for processing. Configure the credential username and password used by the Ansible playbooks.

Configure CloudForms to have access to the Ansible repository for the playbooks. The repository should be set to update playbooks to the latest stored version each time one is launched. If the repository is correctly configured, then the Ansible Playbooks screen will list the available playbooks.

To make the playbooks available in CloudForms, add a catalog item for the Ansible playbooks. Configure the provisioning by selecting the repository, the playbook, and the machine credentials of the systems to be migrated. The environment is now ready to perform a migration.

Performing an Infrastructure Migration

Infrastructure Mapping

A migration requires a mapping between the source infrastructure resources and the RHV destination. CloudForms provides a wizard to walk through each resource to map. The first resource is the compute hosts, where source and destination clusters are mapped to each other.

Figure 11.4: Mapping compute hosts by selecting clusters

The next resource is storage, for mapping data stores to RHV data domains.

Figure 11.5: Mapping storage by selecting data stores

There will be a map for each network, including VM networks, storage networks, the management network, and any others required by VMs being migrated.

Figure 11.6: Mapping networks by selecting logical networks

Migration Plan

A migration plan is used to select the virtual machines to be migrated. CloudForms provides a selector wizard in the Migration Plans screen, with manual section and filters available for locating the correct VMs. Larger lists can be uploaded using a CSV file.

Figure 11.7: Selecting virtual machines

Selected virtual machines can be assigned Ansible playbooks for pre- and post-processing tasks.

Figure 11.8: Configuring migration options

The migration plan can be run immediately, or saved to launch later. When initiated, the plan gathers data and performs pre-migration checks. Once approved, the migration starts.

Figure 11.9: Observing the virtual machines in CloudForms

The CloudForms logs contain a record of the orchestration process. See /var/www/miq/vmdb/log/automation.log on the CloudForms server.

The conversion process for each VM can be tracked in the conversion host logs. See /var/log/vdsm/import/v2v-import-* on each conversion host.

Figure 11.10: Observing the virtual machines in RHV

Progress can also be monitored on the Migration Plan screen. Each VM to migrate will be powered off in vSphere, migrated, and then powered on in RHV. As they arrive, VMs can be observed from the RHV Virtual Machines screen. When all VMs have been converted, the migration is complete.