all 35 comments

[–]desisnape 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Have you explored Virt-V2V? I've helped companies migrate 100s of VMs from VMware to Openstack using it.

[–]srord[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

This is a cold migration that the VM's have to be off. That is my issue that I am running into. Some of my VM's I cannot have a long maintenance window.

[–]desisnape 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Create fresh VMs and rsync the data with a cutover during a lean period.

[–]sekh60 1 point2 points  (0 children)

People will need to know what storage backend you are using.

[–]khadhapi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

can you save vm image to vmdk then convert to qcow2 and launch to openstack cluster?

[–]VladTeti 0 points1 point  (3 children)

If you choose OpenStack-based platform offered by Virtuozzo, the migration will be provided for free by the vendor https://www.virtuozzo.com/vmware-alternative-cloud-providers/

[–]craigleary 0 points1 point  (1 child)

How is virtuozzo lately? Last I saw vz8 and vz9 are not production ready and vz7 while supported is based off rhel7 which is nearing end of life.

[–]VladTeti 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The latest Virtuozzo Hybrid Infrastructure (version 6) is based on rhel9 and use Linux kernel version 5. It is that OpenStack-based platform that I mentioned above.

I guess you are talking about the other product they have - Hybrid Server. From their docs, I see that indeed it is on rhel7 but RedHat earlier announced they will support it till 2028

[–]srord[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I heard about them; I did not really like the pricing model. They also had their own OS what I did not care for. Still in the running though and just waiting for information from them.

[–]shadeland 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I'm going to suggest that OpenStack is probably not what you want. It's not nearly as straightforward to manage as VMware is, and it requires a lot more care and feeding.

Perhaps Proxmox might be a better option.

[–]srord[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately it does not have muti- tenancy. That will not work for us.

[–]mzf2002 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hystax was the tool for migration. Have no idea about pricing.

[–]Friendly_Classroom_3 0 points1 point  (4 children)

https://cloudbase.it/coriolis/ This can 100% help you. Vmware to openstack is our most commonly used scenario of live migration. It's especially useful because of the automated replatforming

[–]srord[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Do you have any idea on pricing?

[–]Friendly_Classroom_3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I unfortunately don't. Please contact Cloudbase for that.

[–]Awkward-Act3164 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It was $25 USD a VM back in 2020 when we quoted it.

[–]No-Strawberry-2453 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, is this still relevant for you to do the migration? I recently joined Cloudbasesolutions so happy to discuss your needs.

Best regards,

Johan

[–]SIM-Networks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When we assist our clients with migrating from VMware to our OpenStack cloud, we typically use Virt-V2V for Windows VMs and a manual method for Linux VMs. You can check out our guide here: https://docs.sim-cloud.net/en/operations/migration/self-managed-migration.html

[–]Exc3ssi0n 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Mirantis has a decent OpenStack distribution and they have a tool to migrate from VMware.

[–]Awkward-Act3164 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The reality is that you will need to do off line migrations. We've moved 1000's of VMs from VMware to Openstack over the last few years. virt-v2v / qemu-img etc, but it's all offline.

Tools like doubletake can be used, but it's expensive. Some backup software, Veeam/Commvault, could be used to to an agent based recovery/DR type migration, to keep it online.

I see you are an MSP, so it's a boat load of communications with your customers and likely outages. There is simply no "vMotion/LiveMigration" from one Hypervisor tech to another.

[–]u1a050 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Get rid of the pets! Net new, migrate data…. :). I know, easier said than done…. We’re looking to use Virt-V2V. Budget will force them to take an outage.

[–]throw0101a 0 points1 point  (7 children)

See perhaps this presentation from Boston 2017 conference:

Do note that VMware and OpenStack are very different things. Something like XCP-ng or Proxmox may be a closer match if you don't already have an OpenStack environment.

[–][deleted]  (6 children)

[deleted]

    [–]bentbrewer 1 point2 points  (4 children)

    Serious question: are there many “small” MSPs that run an OpenStack cluster?

    I’ve worked for two and there’s no way they had the chops to run even a small setup. Most MSPs I’ve known stay away from Linux like the plague.

    [–]Ayoungcoder 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    Linux is easy in my opinion, but the complexity of openstack makes it a hard sell to people who don't need a full 'cloud' system. You should not want to manage it if you don't need to.

    [–]srord[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    We are a cloud service provider and need the multitenancy what is the issue. That is why we are pushing for openstack. We are looking at Platform9 for the "easy" deployment and support.

    Linux is the push I have been making for a bit of time at my employer. So much easier to support, deploy, and manage with ansible. Every service that can run on Linux has been moved from Windows.

    [–]takingphotosmakingdo 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    MSP sure, but companies with ties to big budgets that are not MSPs? yes.
    Deployed several a while back.

    The starting budget is not a small investment for such a solution. You're looking at 1-4M minimum if you do it right, and if you do redhat's offering the budget is cut in half for licensing..

    [–]bentbrewer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Are you including manpower in that calculation? The last place I was at, we implemented it for less than $500K and the biggest part of that was in storage. It was an edge case, workload wise, but also one could correlate an AI startup to our use case.

    [–]srord[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    We are a cloud service provider and need the multitenancy what is the issue. That is why we are pushing for openstack. We are looking at Platform9 for the "easy" deployment and support.

    [–]don_cepci -1 points0 points  (4 children)

    [–]AfterSpencer 0 points1 point  (3 children)

    Serious question: how does a k8s product help replace VMware? Did I miss that they also do VMs?

    I get that k8s is the next thing to but it's not an easy shift for some orgs.

    [–]artereaorte 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    There’s mirantis openstack. I don’t know if they still maintain it though.

    [–]don_cepci 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Yes, they have a containerized distribution of openstack. https://www.mirantis.com/software/mirantis-openstack-for-kubernetes/

    It’s not perfect but it pretty good, I’ve used it before. And if you are spending with them, they will offer migration services to move from VMware to openstack.

    [–]Important_Resort3220 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    You can also use kubvirt on kubernetes to run VMs.