Expedite VMware migration to Amazon EC2 and Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP using the BlueXP workload factory migration advisor

Over the past two decades, virtualization, specifically VMware was the key technology trend that has helped organizations reduce costs, improve operational efficiency, and simplify infrastructure management. However, the technology landscape is rapidly evolving. Cloud service providers now offer advanced hypervisor capabilities that match or exceed traditional on-premises virtualization solutions, while providing seamless integration with a vast array of cloud-native services. The recent acquisition of VMware by Broadcom has introduced significant changes to licensing models and pricing structures, prompting many organizations to revise their virtualization strategy.

In response to these industry shifts, businesses of all sizes are actively seeking paths to efficiently migrate their VMware workloads to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). This transition isn’t just about avoiding potential licensing constraints, it is also an opportunity to modernize infrastructure, and leverage the benefits of AWS services, such as cost-effectiveness, flexibility, reliability, and security. However, these migrations often present significant challenges: complex planning cycles, performance optimization efforts, and risks of costly oversights during the migration process.

The BlueXP workload factory for AWS migration advisor from NetApp helps organizations overcome these challenges by providing automated planning and optimization for migrating VMware workloads to Amazon EC2 instances with Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP (FSxN) storage.

In this post, we’ll show you how the workload factory migration advisor can help you plan and perform a seamless migration from VMware deployments to AWS as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: seamless migration from VMware deployments to AWS

Walkthrough

In this blog post, you will learn how to analyze your source VMware workloads, optimize your storage infrastructure, and create a comprehensive migration plan that minimizes risks and streamlines the migration process. The migration advisor guides you through a systematic process to assess, plan, and run your VMware migration:

1. Choose planning option.
2. Prepare for AWS Cloud onboarding.
3. Scope VMs for migration.
4. Classify virtual disks.
5. Package deployment plan.
6. Review migration plan.
7. Provision optimized storage infrastructure.

Prerequisites

Before starting this exercise, you should have:

• An AWS account.
• Access to your VMware environment.
• RVTools or VMware PowerCLI installed (depending on assessment type).
• BlueXP account (free).

How the Workload Factory migration advisor works

Before we dive into the step-by-step migration procedure, let’s understand how BlueXP workload factory helps you streamline your VMware migration to AWS. The solution provides a comprehensive migration advisor that analyzes your existing VMware environment and creates an optimized plan for transitioning to Amazon EC2 with FSx for ONTAP storage.

The migration advisor supports transitions from any VMware environment, whether on-premises, in VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC), or hosted by other cloud providers, to native AWS infrastructure. It performs detailed analysis of your current virtual machine configurations in vSphere environments and generates tailored recommendations for deployments of Amazon EC2, complemented by Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), and customized FSx for ONTAP file systems as external datastores.

This approach offers several key advantages:

• Cost optimization: By decoupling host and storage resources and leveraging advanced data efficiency features, you can significantly reduce infrastructure costs.
• Scalability: Storage capacity can be adjusted independently of compute resources, providing greater flexibility.
• Advanced data management: Access to NetApp ONTAP capabilities such as efficient snapshots, cloning, and data compression.
• Operational efficiency: Reduced hardware management overhead and simplified infrastructure scaling.
• High availability: Support for multi-AZ deployments and flexible networking options.

Go to workload factory as in Figure 2, and select the VMware/“Migration to AWS native compute” option to start the planning process for migrating your VMware workloads to native-AWS compute and FSx for ONTAP.

Figure 2: Workload factory

1. Choose planning option

The first step is selecting the appropriate assessment method for gathering data about your VMware environment. The migration advisor offers two approaches, each suited for different migration planning needs:

Quick Assessment

This option creates a high-level design blueprint using RVTools, a widely-used VMware infrastructure assessment tool. Quick assessment is ideal when you need to:

• Get a rapid initial evaluation of your environment.
• Understand baseline deployment requirements.
• Preview potential cost structures.
• Identify preliminary optimization opportunities.

Detailed planning

For a more comprehensive analysis, the detailed planning option leverages VMware PowerCLI through the built-in migration advisor data collector. This method:

• Collects extended performance metrics over time.
• Monitors runtime behavior of your VMs.
• Generates deployment-ready, well-architected designs.
• Provides granular optimization recommendations.
• Creates accurate storage architecture blueprints.

The detailed planning option is recommended for production migrations where precise performance sizing and cost optimization are critical factors.

For this walkthrough, we’ll use the detailed planning option to demonstrate the full capabilities of the migration advisor as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Workload Factory migration advisor

After selecting your preferred assessment method, the migration advisor will begin collecting the necessary configuration and performance data from your VMware environment. This data forms the foundation for all subsequent migration planning steps.

2. Prepare for AWS Cloud on-boarding

After choosing your planning option, the next step is to prepare your VM data for analysis and set your target AWS environment parameters. This step is crucial for ensuring an accurate assessment and tailored migration plan. The preparation process is divided into three key areas:

VM configuration upload

1. Expand the VM configuration tab in the migration advisor interface.
2. Locate the Codebox on the right side of the screen.
3. Download or copy the provided script snippet.
4. Run the script in your VMware environment. This will generate an inventory ZIP file containing comprehensive data about your VMs.
5. Upload the resulting inventory ZIP file to the migration advisor.

VM inventory considerations

In this section, you specify the target AWS Region for your migration:

1. Locate the AWS Region drop-down menu.
2. Select the region where you plan to deploy your migrated workloads (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Specify the AWS Region for your migration

Target capacity and protection considerations

The migration advisor provides default parameters for capacity and data protection based on industry best practices. In this tab, you can review and adjust these settings to align with your organization’s specific requirements.

3. Scope VMs for migration

Next, the migration advisor shows the VMs that will be migrated (Figure 5). By default, all VMs that are powered-on are selected. You can change the rules to select all the VMs, choose specific data centers, specific clusters, or manually search for and select specific VMs.

Figure:5 Migration advisor shows the VMs that will be migrated

4. Classify virtual disks

Storage infrastructure evaluation is a critical component of your migration planning. In this step, the migration advisor performs a detailed analysis of your virtual disks and creates an optimized storage deployment plan using Amazon FSx for ONTAP and Amazon EBS storage services.

Automatic Volume Tiering Assignment

The migration advisor automatically assigns the most cost-effective tiering policy for each volume based on its performance profile (Figure 6):

• capacity-optimized volumes: lowest cost per GB, low IOPS and low SLA requirements, suitable for rarely accessed data.
• standard volumes: configured with autotiering for cost optimization, standard storage volumes are best fit for general purpose applications.
• performance-optimized volumes: designed for highly demanding performance and SLA requirements, and VMs with average IO rates of greater than 5000 IOPS.

As part of the detailed planning (Step 1), these assignments are determined by analyzing average and peak IOPS, throughput, service time metrics, and SLA requirements from the source virtual machines in the VMware environment. If you selected the quick assessment option in Step 1, then you will need to manually estimate and assign performance requirements for your VMs, as runtime data collection is only available in detailed planning mode.

Figure 6: Migration advisor automatically assigns the most cost-effective tiering policy for each volume based on its performance profile

Storage configuration strategy

As in figure 7, the migration advisor implements a dual-storage approach for optimal performance and cost efficiency: root volumes are configured as Amazon EBS gp3 volumes, whereas application data volumes are deployed as iSCSI volumes on FSx for ONTAP, for example shared storage for SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances. This configuration strategy is based on two key architectural requirements:

• Most of the EC2 instance types require EBS-backed root volumes, where the operating system and boot files are installed.
• Application data volumes require different key features, and they have distinct performance characteristics that can benefit from FSx for ONTAP’s advanced features, such as multi-protocol access, data deduplication, compression, and replication.

Figure 7: Review EC2 volume assignment

5. Package deployment plan

The migration advisor analyzes previously collected data to generate an optimized virtual machine deployment plan on FSx for ONTAP. This comprehensive plan accounts for your storage requirements while ensuring optimal performance and cost efficiency. The configuration includes built-in headroom to accommodate average daily workload requirements, as well as peak performance demands.

The deployment summary table (figure 8) provides a detailed view of instance storage assignment:

Figure 8 Deployment Summary table

To examine specific details:

1. Select any FSx for ONTAP system from the table.
2. Review source VMs, protection policies, associated volumes and their attributes.
3. Verify the proposed configurations align with your requirements.

After reviewing the deployment plan, select Next to proceed with the migration planning process.

6. Review migration plan

The final review stage provides you with cost analysis and detailed deployment specifications to ensure your migration plan aligns with both technical requirements and business objectives.

The migration advisor conducts a thorough cost comparison between the proposed FSx for ONTAP configuration and an equivalent all-EBS setup. For fair comparison, the all-EBS scenario mirrors the tiered approach used in the FSx for ONTAP plan, matching workload requirements with appropriate EBS volume types: io2 volumes for performance-optimized workloads, gp3 for standard workloads, and st1 for capacity-optimized storage needs.

Figure 9: Migration advisor comparison of FSx for ONTAP and Amazon EBS

After completing your review, you can export the entire migration plan as json file or download a comprehensive report as a PDF document. This exported plan serves as your implementation guide, containing all the technical specifications, best practices, and configuration recommendations derived from the analysis of your VMware environment. When you’re confident in the proposed plan, simply click Done to conclude the planning phase and prepare for implementation.

7. Provision optimized storage infrastructure

Follow the migration plan and provision your optimized FSx for ONTAP systems using the parameters that you carefully crafted in the previous steps. From the workload factory Home page, navigate to the Storage section, and click “Create file system” option. Choose “Advanced create” – and define the new FSx for ONTAP configuration with the recommended parameters from the migration plan.

The workload factory offers two possible ways of provisioning the storage:

• Using the Workload Factory UI: a point-and-click approach. Please note that you will need AWS target account credentials to create the actual FSx for ONTAP file systems. You can find detailed instructions on how to add AWS credentials in BlueXP workload factory setup and administration documentation.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): workload factory can automatically generate IaC code snippets that you can copy to your code base that manages resources in your AWS accounts. Supported formats are CloudFormation, Terraform, and REST API. The code is displayed in the Codebox on the right side of your screen.

The IaC approach is particularly convenient if you’re managing multiple file systems or want to incorporate the deployment into your existing automation workflows.

Figure 10: Workload factory options for provisioning storage

Cleaning up

To avoid incurring future charges, make sure to delete any FSx for ONTAP file systems and EC2 instances that you created for testing purposes.

Conclusion

In this post, we showed how NetApp BlueXP workload factory migration advisor can help streamline your VMware migration to AWS. Whether you’re looking to reduce costs, improve operational efficiency, or accelerate your cloud adoption journey, this solution provides the tools and guidance needed to make your migration successful, by enabling you with automated analysis, planning, and optimization capabilities.

To learn more, you can visit BlueXP workload factory documentation, as well as our blog post about seamless migration from any VMware environment to Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP and Amazon EC2. If you migrate your virtual machines from VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) to Amazon EC2, then we recommend that you learn more about AWS VMware Migration Accelerator (VMA), a migration program introduced by Amazon to help customers get to lower costs, speed up migration, and reduce risks.

We encourage you to share your migration experiences in the comments section below.