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Cross vCenter Workload Migration Fling v3.1

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Here is a small update to the Cross vCenter Workload Migration Fling which includes a couple of commonly requested features along with some bug fixes.

What's New in v3.1

  • Support for disk format conversion between Thick (Lazy Zeroed), Thick (Eager Zeroed) and Thin provisioning
  • Support for VM rename pattern for Clone operation
  • Fixed duplicated network selection when performing bulk migration
  • Fixed startup failure when a new home vCenter is specified as a command line argument

vSphere HTML5 and Standalone UI Client Support

In our 3.0 release, we added support for a native vSphere HTML5 (H5) Client experience which leverages new remote plugin framework that was introduced in vSphere 6.7 Update 1 and enables customers who prefer to use the H5 Client for their day to day use to also take advantage of the Cross vCenter Workload Migration Tool directly from the same UI. However, the addition of this new consumption UI created some confusion as some folks assumed this was the only mechanism. As stated in the release notes, we support both the new H5 UI as well as the standalone UI which many customers have been using for quite some time.

I suspect the confusion was due to the new CLI syntax which now requires specifying a vCenter Server endpoint to register. It is true that if you wish to use the new H5 Client integration, you will need to have a vSphere 6.7 Update 1 environment and provide credentials to that "home" vCenter Server. However, if you do not wish to use the H5 Client and you wish to use the old standalone client, you simply omit the vCenter Server registration details and the standalone client will work. In fact, even if you decide to use the H5 Client UI, you can always use the standalone client as that is the actual backend of the system.

Option 1: vSphere H5 Client Plugin

The following command will register the Cross vCenter Workload Migration Fling plugin to the specified vCenter Server:

java -jar xvm-3.1.jar --vcenter.fqdn=VCENTER-IP-OR-FQDN --vcenter.user=ADMIN-USER --vcenter.pass=ADMIN-PASSWORD

You will need to logout and then log back in to see the plugin which is located under "Menu" as shown in the screenshot below.

Option 2: Standalone UI Client

The following command will start the Cross vCenter Workload Migration Fling in standalone mode:

java -jar xvm-3.1.jar

You can then access the standalone client by opening a browser to localhost and port specified (default is 8443). You can always access the plugin locally whether you are using Option 1 or 2.

Resource Pools, Folders & VMC now supported with Cross vCenter vMotion Utility Fling

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Many of you are already familiar with the Cross vCenter vMotion Utility, which was released as a Fling last year. In fact, a number of you have even shared your VM migration numbers, many of which are quite impressive (e.g. 5-10K VMs). Not only are the number of production VMs significant, but I also learned the duration of customer migration projects, such as datacenter evacuation, was able to complete significantly faster with the help of this tool.

Although v2.1 was just recently released, Vishal, the lead developer is constantly looking for ways to improve the tool. Most recently, we had a few customers ask for supporting additional placement targets such as vSphere VM Folders and Resource Pools. Customers often use VM Folders for organization purposes but also as a way to manage permissions and of course resource management with the use of Resource Pools (not for organization purposes ;)). These two stand alone feature are quite useful on their own, but they are also a building block to allow us to support migrating workloads to and from VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) which we have received requests for as well. VMC has a restrictive permission model and customer workloads must be placed in a specific VM Folder and Resource Pool, both of which was not initially supported with the Cross vCenter vMotion Utility.

With the latest v2.2. release, customers will now have the ability to optionally specify a target Resource Pool and/or VM Folder by enabling an Advanced settings option at the upper right hand corner of the tool as shown in the screenshot below.


Below is a screenshot of vMotion'ing 3 running PhotonOS VMs from onPrem environment to my VMC's SDDC. The Fling supports both hot and cold relocate, however for vMotion to work you will need to ensure that your source vCenter Server (including ESXi hosts) are running vSphere 6.7 and the VM is configured with the new Per-VM EVC (requires vHW 14) which can be configured in the vSphere H5 Client.

Give the latest Fling a try and let us know what you think, if you have any feedback or request, feel free to leave a comment on the Fling page.

Cross vCenter Clone with vSphere 6.0+

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Similar to the Cross vCenter vMotion (xVC-vMotion) feature that was introduced in vSphere 6.0, Virtual Machine cloning can also be performed across two different vCenter Servers, regardless of their deployment type or SSO configurations. If vCenter Servers are part of an Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM), then a xVC-Clone operation can be initiated using the vSphere Web Client. However, if the vCenter Servers are not part of the same SSO Domain, then you will need to use the vSphere API to perform the operation similar to an xVC-vMotion.

Right before the holiday break, I had a few inquiries on providing some sample code that could demonstrate the Cross vCenter Clone (xVC-Clone) operation using the vSphere API. With that, I have created a new PowerCLI script called xNew-VM.ps1 which does exactly that and should feel familiar for anyone who has used my xMove-VM.ps1 script before. Before getting started, be sure to familiarize yourself with the requirements and supported configurations for xVC-Clone operations, which can be found here and here.

The script contains a number of variables that will need to be defined based on your specific environment. The following variables below pertain to the "source" vCenter Server from where you wish to initiate the clone operation from:

$sourcevmname = "PhotonOS-02"
$sourceVC = "vcenter65-1.primp-industries.com"
$sourceVCUsername = "*protected email*"
$sourceVCPassword = "VMware1!"

The following variables below pertain to the "destination" vCenter Server from where the cloned VM will be deployed to:

$destvmname= "PhotonOS-02-Clone"
$destVC = "vcenter65-3.primp-industries.com"
$destVCUsername = "*protected email*"
$destVCpassword = "VMware1!"
$datastorename = "vsanDatastore"
$datacenter = "Datacenter-SiteB"
$cluster = "Santa-Barbara"
$resourcepool = "MyRP" # cluster property not needed if you are using RP, useful for VMware Cloud on AWS
$vmhostname = "vesxi65-4.primp-industries.com"
$vmnetworkname = "VM Network"
$foldername = "Discovered virtual machine"
$switchtype = "vss"
$poweron = $false #optional
$snapshotname = "pristine" #optional

The last two variables are optional which merely controls whether the cloned VM is powered on and whether the source VM is being cloned while running, in which case, a snapshot is required.

Below is a screenshot of my two vCenter Servers, where vcenter65-1 is my "Source" and vcenter65-3 is my "Destination. I have a VM called PhotonOS-02 which is powered on and I have already taken a snapshot which I have named "pristine". I will then perform a xVC-Clone of the VM to the "Destination" vCenter Server and the new VM will be called "PhotonOS-02-Clone".


Once you have updated the script, you can simply execute it as shown in the screenshot below.


If we now head back over to our vSphere Web/H5 Client, we should now see the xVC-Clone operation start and shortly after (depending on the size of the VM being cloned), it should eventually appear on the destination vCenter Server that was specified in the script.


For quick and small deployments of a few VMs, the xVC-Clone feature can be quite handy. However, if you plan to deploy more than a couple of VMs, it would be more efficient to setup a vSphere Content Library which can configured to automatically sync all or specific content to the destination vCenter Server(s), which will help speed up deployment. I should also point out that cloning from vSphere 6.5+ from onPrem to VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) also works and is fully supported in both direction which the vMotion/Provisioning PM had just shared with me. For VMC usage, you will need to ensure you specify the Compute-ResourcePool as the permission model in VMC is restrictive and you can not deploy directly to the vSphere Cluster and/or ESXi host.

Lastly, as mentioned earlier, the script I have provided is merely an example demonstrating the use of the xVC-Clone operation using the vSphere API and consuming it through PowerCLI. Unlike the Move-VM cmdlet which supports xVC operation natively, the New-VM does not currently support xVC-Clone. If you would like to see this natively supported as part of PowerCLI's New-VM cmdlet, be sure to add a +1 to PowerCLI Feature Request here.