Migration, in literal sense, is a relocation of a population to a place usually considered more optimal for that population’s survival or quality of life. Migration may happen periodically or over time and may occur in either direction, to or from a place previously considered home. While this applies mostly to populations of living things, the phenomenon of migrating to the cloud is similar in many ways. For instance, a move from a mostly winter climate to the tropics, where you quickly learn that suntan lotion must always be in plentiful supply or you will pay a handsome sum for it at the beach. Or, when relocating to a different country for a new job, it is often beneficial to learn the native language to gain proficiencies in your post-migration lifestyle. This analogy for migration of applications to the cloud is used throughout this document to illustrate a running theme. VMware wants customers showing up prepared and able to take advantage of this new real estate, called hybrid cloud, for their information technology and business operations.

Ideally, once the initial move is completed in a migration, preparations can be made for future moves, the eventual visits, or even a permanent return to home. In the case of VMware Cloud Providers™, this capability is delivered through the hybrid cloud network coupled with migration services that seek to help customers understand which portions of their workloads will not only survive, but thrive under the new conditions. This section of the VMware vCloud Architecture Toolkit™ for Service Providers (vCAT-SP) explores the idea of and preparation for migration, including hybrid cloud readiness. The following figure is a Venn diagram of some of the tools required to establish each of these capabilities. While not all of the tools shown in the figure are required, this document covers the VMware solutions available to VMware Cloud Providers and their collective purpose.

 

The components are used to deliver the core functionality of the hybrid cloud, which is mainly to connect the private cloud to VMware Cloud Provider Program partner data centers. This connectivity occurs at the physical layer, such as MPLS provisioned from a telecom carrier into the data center or through self-service software-defined networks, such as a Layer 2 IPsec VPN, established by the customer. These networks must have the throughput to support the number of active, concurrent migrations, and decisions must be made as to whether they will be temporary or long-lived.

Throughout the vCloud Architecture Toolkit, the phrase “workload mobility” is used. To clarify, while migration does have a component for moving workloads between environments, tackling the challenge through only workload mobility leaves a portion of the real opportunity unaddressed. When evaluating workload mobility against technologies like VMware vSphere® Replication, VMware Site Recovery Manager™, or even long distance VMware vSphere vMotion®, we assume that workloads are firmly ensconced in the management of not only vSphere but other components, such as VMware NSX® or VMware vRealize® Operations™. The opportunity then involves capturing as much information as possible about workloads, regardless of their platform and dependencies, to gain adequate control of both their migration and ongoing management post-migration in the hybrid cloud.

Migration might be a one-time only event, where often many choices about which technologies, configurations and processes can be made within the scope of the migration window itself. It might also be a one-way journey where you are leaving physical systems or virtualization platforms behind, which might demand an even more utilitarian approach from the networking and tools perspective. When planning for migration, service provider partners and customers must do an analysis of future states based on application needs and opportunities, as well as the VMware Cloud Provider Program roadmap. This upfront analysis phase helps to make sure that the appropriate resources and tools are chosen. This analysis also instructs as to the sustainability and desired transformational capabilities of those resources and tools for enterprise customers to leverage future VMware Cloud Provider Program offerings. Examples of these include hybrid cloud, disaster recovery to cloud, database replication to cloud, and so on. Many of these examples are outlined in the vCAT-SP.

No choices can be made future-proof. VMware intends to establish the appropriate set of evaluation criteria for understanding how to transform to a future state so that any barriers for customers consuming VMware Cloud Provider Program hybrid cloud become greatly diminished. All parties involved in the migration to VMware Cloud Providers must have the correct set of working information. This data is used to plan and to remove some of the unknowns that tend to occur when information is being gathered by parties to make mutual decisions concerning application migration. The critical difference between a workload and application is that a workload is simply a container for an operating system and other opaque contents perhaps related to an application. The application residing in that workload, in a migration context, requires understanding and planning to accommodate the application layer dependencies that exist within workloads.

After this method of migrating and consuming VMware cloud technologies is established, whether on-premises or through the VMware Cloud Provider Program, you can leverage all of the benefits of a public cloud provider market while addressing the long-term potential risks of migrating to the public cloud without possessing true hybrid cloud capabilities. Much like renting your house as you migrate to a new location to preserve the potential for a return home, a good migration plan allows for an evolution of application placement that matches your overall enterprise goals and objectives. This document describes the thinking, the approach, and examples of different tools used to accommodate migration to the cloud while identifying and addressing the critical path criteria for success. It also empowers VMware service provider partners and customers to leverage the correct capabilities at the correct time using the appropriate price/cost structures.