Migrating to a VMware Cloud for Application Developers

Migrating to the cloud can be deceptively simple. There are a variety of cloud migration utilities that can convert physical machines, virtual machines, and even third-party images to various VMware server formats. Even with conversion tools making your life easier, there are a myriad of concerns to keep in mind. Ready to begin?

Initial Considerations

Before making the leap to cloud infrastructure, you should think hard about your implementation and how it can best serve your business:

• What are the main reasons for making the move to the cloud? Are your reasons understood by the IT team?
• Will your cloud implementation stand by itself or interface with other infrastructure or applications?
• How many users will need access? How will you train and support them?
• What is the total cost to implement this cloud? Will you pay as you go or choose a set system specification?
• Does this implementation include security or compliance considerations? Will users be trained for special security circumstances?
• What applications and infrastructure will you migrate, and what will stay local? What kind of licensing will be needed to migrate your apps?

If this is your first cloud migration, application developers might consider starting  with low-risk, low-value apps to get used to the cloud environment before migrating heavy-duty items. Applications with minimal customer data, apps that require burstability, or less vital low-bandwidth apps are all good choices.

Measure Current Server Usage

In order to ensure a smooth migration, you’ll need to know your current server environment front to back. This will help you purchase the right amount of hardware and licenses, and hopefully evade any application compatibility issues. This is also a chance to evaluate your current hardware to decide what use, if any, it will serve post-migration.

• Measure the performance and usage of CPU, memory, disk and network
• Spend one week to one month measuring these statistics to see any spikes or trends in usage, especially during intensive business events
• For CPUs, focus on average utilization, but also check processor queue length and processing time
• For memory, watch the available free memory and pages per second (the time it takes for pages to be written to disk in order to resolve page faults)
• For disk usage, measure how much space you’re using and the transfer rate, examining stats like disk time, disk queue length, bytes per second and physical disk transfers per second
• For network, track the total bytes per second, and note all servers with large traffic

You may have an existing or built-in tool to measure performance, or you can use a variety of third party tools. VMware also offers a Capacity Planner designed to collect all necessary metrics on Windows servers. A VMware business partner can install this tool for you. Alternatively, the light version of Capacity Planner is built into vCenter and leads directly into the Converter tool.

Update: Ready to get started migrating? Read how to use vCenter Converter to move your physical machine or existing virtual machine to a VMware cloud.

Posted By: Joe Kozlowicz