Migration can sometimes be of the more involved enterprise architecture variety described in the previous sections. For applications that match numbers 1 or 2 in Table 2, it is best to use tools to perform the migration that do not require a great deal of Discovery and Assessment. One method to do this is to utilize vCenter Converter and the OVF Tool. These tools are pervasive within VMware environments and both are free to download and use. They are also fairly well-known within the VMware administrator community. In the following figure, vCenter Converter supports many types of sources and targets and also is a Windows-based GUI tool (with a Windows Service to manage vCenter Converter instances remotely). For information about the latest release of vCenter Converter, see the VMware vCenter Converter Standalone User's Guide.

 

OVF Tool is based on the standard Open Virtualization Format developed by DMTF (committee chaired by VMware along with other vendors) to promote compatibility for accepting virtual machines into different cloud environments. OVF Tool is a command line tool that begins with a simple syntax although more advanced flags are available for specific requirements. For more information, see the VMware OVF Tool User's Guide. In the case of both tools, it is about putting power in the hands of the virtualization administrator to prepare the right package and ship those bits to the target environment, be it from physical to virtualization or to cloud.