Simplifying the complexity of planning VM migrations & how HPE simplifies the journey

[HPE_Experts]

Migrating VMs is a key step in IT transformation, but poor planning can lead to costly disruptions. Effective migrations require clear objectives, risk management, and thorough resource allocation.

Migration! Most system administrators will run very fast in the opposite direction when they hear the word. Despite that, the topic is coming up constantly when organizations look to optimize the costs of hypervisor farms and come to the realization that KubeVirt has become a true contender to VMware.

VM migrations are becoming a strategic imperative for enterprises committed to consolidating containers and VM workloads in a single platform, reducing cost and complexity in the process.

The drawback is, too many organizations underestimate the complexity of VM migrations, diving headfirst into implementation without a clear road map.

The result? Delays, cost overruns, unexpected downtime, and, in worst cases, failed migrations.

This is why rigorous planning is not only helpful but essential. When coupled with a trusted partner like Hewlett Packard Enterprise, organizations can implement the migration with speed, confidence, and minimal disruption.

Failing to plan is planning to fail

Migrating workloads isn’t always as simple as lift and shift. Every enterprise has a unique IT footprint, business requirements, and compliance considerations. A successful migration demands a holistic view of the environment, including:

• Discovery and assessment of current infrastructure: Before anything moves, organizations need to know what they’re moving. This calls for a full inventory of servers, applications, interdependencies, usage patterns, and potential compatibility issues.
• Clear migration objectives: Whether the goal is cost reduction, improved performance, or greater scalability, without clearly defined success metrics, it is impossible to estimate ROI and prioritize the workloads that will form part of the first wave.
• Risk identification and mitigation: Migrations inherently come with risk—data loss, downtime, or compliance violations. Proactive planning allows teams to anticipate issues and build mitigation strategies (e.g., rollback plans, data validation steps, downtime windows).
• Resource allocation and timing: Migrations require cross-functional collaboration from different teams like system administrators, security officers, business units responsible for the application, and sometimes external vendors. A clear timeline with defined roles and responsibilities ensures accountability and minimizes disruption.
• Testing and validation strategy: Postmigration testing is usually an afterthought. Proper planning should include comprehensive test cases to validate application functionality, performance, data integrity, and user access.

How to accelerate VM migrations and reduce the risks associated

HPE recommends and follows a structured five-phase approach that consists of:

Discovery -> Assessment -> Planning -> Implementation -> Validation

The discovery phase's main objective is to invent the existing workloads that are candidates for migration, identify dependencies between those workloads that may go unnoticed, understand the resource footprint of the workloads, and learn when the peak utilization takes place to assist with scheduling the best time possible for the migration exercise. Failing to identify the dependencies will result in applications that, after migrated, will not perform as expected. HPE tools and methodology offer rich discovery capabilities that can help customers easily find these gaps.

The application assessments stage determines the suitability of the application for the target platform, taking into consideration the complexity of the application topology, whether the source is a physical server (P2V) or a VM with a different format than the one used in the target environment (V2V). During the assessment phase, we seek to identify the quick wins (applications that will transition easily to the new platform) and position them as first candidates to test the speed of the migration in the unique customer environment.

During the planning phase, we determine if the applications can afford downtime (also known as cold migration) and how much downtime is allowed or if the application is mission-critical in nature and must be migrated while running (also known as warm migration). Warm migrations, although less disruptive—take considerably longer to complete and will require a small cut-over window to help ensure data consistency. The outcome of the planning phase will determine the duration of the migration exercise for each batch of applications and the associated downtime windows that are acceptable for the business.

While planning is crucial, implementation is where many enterprises fall behind. HPE agentless architecture mitigates the need to install software on source machines, reducing complexity and speeding up migrations. It automates the migration process, reducing human error and freeing up internal resources. 

The implementation of the migrations concludes with the successful validation of the application in the target platform or with a rollback to the source platform and the logs to determine what went wrong during the exercise and pointers on how to fix the problem for the next attempted migration. For this phase, HPE collaborates with the application owners to make sure that the applications are performing as expected in the new environment.

Beyond the methodology and tooling, HPE brings hands-on expertise and countless flying hours on migration engagements. HPE migration services consultants work hand in hand with the key stakeholders on each stage of the migration lifecycle, helping ensure it aligns with the business goals and compliance standards of the organization.

Ready to go ahead with a painless migration?

Let Advisory and Professional Services guide you on every step of the journey.

HPE understands that once workloads reach production maturity, care must be taken to achieve business continuity when live data is mission critical to the organization. Advisory and Professional Services for platform migration can help organizations plan the right strategy that allows them to achieve one of the most aggressive migration targets whilst reducing the impact on the business operations.

Learn more about HPE Cloud Native Computing Services – Container Adoption and  HPE Cloud Platform Services – Platform Migration

Meet the author:
Alex Tesch, WW Principal Architect