Running and Migrating VMs

This page describes how to use the Velostrata vCenter plugin to start running or migrating individual VMs to Google Cloud. The distinction between these terms is explained in Running VMs versus Migrating VMs.

Prerequisites

Before running or migrating any on-premises VMs on Google Cloud you must create a Cloud Extension.

Running a VM in the Cloud or Starting a Migration

1. From the vSphere Web Client, select the desired Virtual Machine.

2. Right-click on the required VM and

   1. select Velostrata Operations > Run-in-Cloud, or
   2. select Velostrata Operations > Migrate

3. Select your Cloud Extension.

4. (Optional) Name the Cloud VM .

5. Click Next. The Cloud Instance screen appears.

1. Select the Project and Instance Type.

   Velostrata suggests instance sizes which approximate the capacity and performance of the existing VM. See Cloud Instance Rightsizing for information on how recommendations are processed.

   Note: the prices shown are for compute costs only and do not include disk and network costs which are variable. For more information, see Compute Engine Pricing.

2. Click Next. The Storage Policy screen appears.

3. Select Write Back or Write Isolation for the Storage Policy. See Understanding Storage Policies.

4. Click Next. The Networking screen appears.

1. Select a cloud Subnet for the VM.
2. Enter the comma separated Network Tags which will be applied to the migrated VM. Network tags are used by networks to identify which instances are subject to certain firewall rules and network routes.
3. (Optional) Select the Instance Service Account .
4. From the Configure Private IP drop-down list, select one of the following:
   • Auto to automatically assign an available address from the subnet, or
   • Static and enter a Static IP within the VPC subnet.
5. From the Edge Node drop-down list, select the node in your Cloud Extension that will handle the migration.

6. For External IP, select one of the following:

   • None, to not assign an external IP address.
   • Static, to assign an external IP previously created on the Google Cloud console.
   • Ephemeral, for an automatically assigned external IP.
   Note: the External IP setting persists after the VM has been detached from Velostrata. External IP addresses are visible in the Public IP Address field in the Velostrata Cloud Extension portlet on vSphere.

7. Click Next.

8. If you are performing a Migrate operation:

   • select the Disk Type for your instance and Service Account that will host the worker instance handling the migration.
   • Click Next. The Summary screen appears.

9. Review the summary and then click Finish.

The process of running the VM in the cloud and then migrating the VM can be viewed on the Cloud Instance Information portlet on the VM Summary page, and by monitoring the created vSphere task.

After running a VM in Google Cloud

You can connect to the VM when the Remote Console field in the Cloud Instance Information portlet turns green and reads "Ready".

Additional information about monitoring the VM from vSphere can be found at Monitoring a VM.

Note: When you run a VM in the cloud and the instance does respond to a probe, Velostrata attempts to fix the problem and restart the instance. If this does not succeed, the Run-in-Cloud task is rolled back.

After migrating a VM to Google Cloud

Storage migrations take several hours. Once the Migrate wizard is completed, the VM is Ready to Detach. See Detaching a VM to continue.