Migrate for Compute Engine 4.11 release notes

This page documents production updates to Migrate for Compute Engine. You can periodically check this page for announcements about new or updated features, bug fixes, known issues, and deprecated functionality.

You can see the latest product updates for all of Google Cloud on the Google Cloud page, browse and filter all release notes in the Google Cloud console, or programmatically access release notes in BigQuery.

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For a list of builds for this release and others, see the Build history.

Requirements and OS Support

See Requirements and Supported operating systems.

Adobe Flash Player End of Life

As of January 2021, Adobe Flash Player is End of Life. The Migrate for Compute Engine Plugin is dependent on Flash Player. We recommended that you now use waves UI to execute migrations.

4.11 new features

Google Cloud Secret Manager password and encryption key management

V4.11 offers integration with Secret Manager. You can store Migrate for Compute Engine password and encryption key as objects in secret manager to provide a higher level of security and control. See Configuring the migration manager for more.

Windows 2008R2 to Windows 2012R2 upgrade with BYOL

V4.11 introduces Windows upgrade with bring-your-own-license (BYOL) feature. Migrating Windows Server 2008R2 with a customer owned license (BYOL) can upgrade to Windows Server 2012R2 using BYOL as part of the migration process. See Upgrading Windows Server VMs for more.

Automatic deployment of Google Cloud OS Config agent to migrating VMs

V4.11 introduces automatic deployment of Google Cloud OS Config agent to migrating VMs. This allows you to get insights on your migrated VM patch status and automate deployment of software patches to migrated VMs. See Adapting VMs to run on Google Cloud for more.

Reduced network connectivity requirements

Migrate Backend network connectivity requirement to Migrate Manager and Cloud Extensions have been reduced, all traffic on this channel is performed over port 443 (HTTPS and TLS) instead of using port 9111. See Network access requirements for more.

Usability enhancements

Usability enhancements in the following flows:

  • Automatic adjustments of VDDK max open sessions when accessing vSphere V6.5 to avoid overloading VDDK max connections limit.
  • Support for vCenter certificate update flow.
  • Enhancement of automatic license assignment feature to offline migration flow.

4.11.12 security updates

December 1, 2022

V.4.11.12 Security updates available.

4.11.11 security updates

November 8, 2022

V.4.11.11 Security updates available.

4.11.10 Fixed Issues

September 19, 2022

#243583591:Fixed an issue with Yum configuration affecting RHEL migrations from Azure to Google Cloud.

4.11.9 security updates

December 16, 2021

V.4.11.9 Security updates available. See Migrate for Compute Engine Downloads for downloads and upgrade instructions.

4.11.8 security updates

December 13, 2021

V.4.11.8 Security updates available.

4.11.7 security updates

October 15, 2021

V.4.11.7 Security updates available.

4.11.6 Fixed Issues

Migrate for Compute Engine now truncates VM names longer than 63 characters to 63 characters.

4.11.5 New Features

Transition the underlying OS used by Migrate for Compute Engine components (Manager, Cloud Extensions, Importers, and Exporters) to use Ubuntu Advantage.

4.11.4 New Features

Added support for the Balanced disk type to the GcpDiskType runbook field when migrating in batches with waves. See Runbook reference for more.

4.11.3 Fixed Issues

Performance improvement during detach phase.

Security fixes applied.

#171638373: General stability improvements.

#171638373: Fixed Windows adaptation issue when boot partition and Windows partition were on different volumes.

#175196444: Fixed Windows adaptation issue with network interface detection.

#174330790: Linux adaptations now archive ifcfg-* scripts to avoid Network Manager conflicts with iSCSI boot.

4.11.2 Fixed Issues

Support added for migration of VMs from vSphere configured with CSM firmware type setting.

4.11.1 Fixed Issues

There is no longer a requirement that the subnet of the deployment cluster be under the same network as the Cloud Extension.

4.11 Known Issues

#241104783: Linux repositories that use Yum as their package management may have Yum configurations set explicitly to minor versions. For example, a Yum configuration may point to specific repositories holding 7.6 packages. This is not currently supported by Google. Only repositories holding the latest versions are supported. This may cause a failure to install the Google guest environment after the VM is detached.

Workaround: Update your Yum configuration to refer to the available repositories. For RHEL 7.x, verify that the variable $releasever holds the value 7Server, and not a specific release version number (7.6, for example) by running echo 7Server > /etc/yum/vars/releasever.

#160405343: Due to a change in behavior on the activation flow for SUSE, configuring repositories on SUSE Enterprise Linux instances post-detach now fail.

Workaround: The following workaround can be used prior to detach (either before migration or before detach).

  1. Follow the instructions described for Situation 4 at https://www.suse.com/support/kb/doc/?id=000019633 to download the required packages for Compute Engine as a tar.gz file.
  2. For SLES 12.x, then run the following commands:

    sha1sum late_instance_offline_update_gce_SLE12.tar.gz
    tar -xf late_instance_offline_update_gce_SLE12.tar.gz
    cd x86_64/
    zypper --no-refresh --no-remote --non-interactive in *.rpm
  3. For SLES 15.x, then run the following commands:

    sha1sum late_instance_offline_update_gce_SLE15.tar.gz
    tar -xf late_instance_offline_update_gce_SLE15.tar.gz
    cd x86_64/
    zypper --no-refresh --no-remote --non-interactive in *.rpm

#149004085: Ubuntu 14 from on-premise may fail to start networking post detach.

Workaround: Connect via the serial console and manually add the network interface with DHCP.

#145086776: In rare cases, older versions of RHEL7 may stop responding during streaming or reach a Kernel panic. This issues were resolved in later versions of RHEL7.

Workaround: Run sudo yum update before migrating to update the system.

#145644737: Clones created on Azure or AWS from instances of Linux distributions that use cloud-init may experience issues in booting after installing the Linux prep package.

Workaround: Uninstall the package before cloning and reinstall when preparing to migrate.

#143313211: Customer migrating RHEL 6.8 VM may experience boot issues in the cloud destination.

RHEL 6.x systems using kernel versions 2.6.32-xxx and using LVM may reach a kernel panic when booting in Compute Engine during migration.

Workaround: The kernel should be upgraded to 2.6.32-754 or higher before migrating.

#143262721: Migration of VM from Azure fails when data disk is greater than 4 terabytes.

At this time, Migrate for Compute Engine does not support migration of Azure VMs with data disks bigger than 4TB.

Workaround: Make sure VM has data disk smaller than 4TB.

#131532690: Run-in-cloud and migration operations may fail for Windows Server 2016 workload when Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) is installed. This may also happen when SEP appears to be disabled.

Workaround: Modify workload Network interface bindings to remove the SEP option.

  1. Download Microsoft Network VSP Bind (nvspbind)
  2. Install Microsoft_Nvspbind_package.EXE into c:\temp.
  3. Open a command prompt as an Administrator and run the following:
    nvspbind.exe /d * symc_teefer2

#131614405: When the Velostrata Prep RPM is installed on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, the VM obtains a DHCP IP address in addition to an existing static IP configuration. This issue occurs when the VM is started on-premises in a subnet that is enabled with DHCP services.

Note: The issue does not occur when the subnet has no DHCP services. There is no connectivity impact for communications with the original static IP address.

#131637800: After registering the Velostrata plug-in, running the Cloud Extension wizard might generate an error "XXXXXXXXXX" upon "Finish".

Workaround: Un-register the Velostrata plug-in and restart the vSphere Web client service, then re-register the plug-in. Contact support if the issue persists.

#131548730: In some cases, when a VM is moved to Run-in-Cloud while a 3rd party VM-level backup solution holds a temporary snapshot, the Migrate for Compute Engine periodic write-back operations will not complete even after the backup solution deletes the temporary snapshot. The uncommitted writes counter on the VM will show an increasing size and no consistency checkpoint will be created on-premises.

Workaround: Select the Run On-Premises action for the VM and wait for the task to complete, which will commit all pending writes. Then select the Run-in-Cloud action again. Note that committing many pending writes may take a while. Do not use the Force option as this will result in the loss of the uncommitted writes.

#131605387: vCenter reboot causes Velostrata tasks in vCenter to disappear from UI. This is a vCenter limitation.

Workaround: Use the Velostrata PowerShell module to monitor Velostrata managed VMs or Cloud Extensions tasks that are currently running.

#131638716: With an ESXi host in maintenance mode, if a VM is moved to cloud, the operation will fail and get stuck in the rollback phase.

Workaround: Manually cancel the Run-in-Cloud task, migrate the VM to another ESXi host in the cluster and retry the Run-in-Cloud operation.

#131638455: A Run-in-Cloud operation fails with the error - "Failed to create virtual machine snapshot. The attempted operation cannot be performed in the current state (Powered off)".

Workaround: The VMware VM snapshot file may be pointing to a non-existent snapshot. Contact support for assistance in correcting the issue.

#131534862: In rare cases, after running a Workload back on-premises - Workload VMDK's are locked. In certain cases, this is due to network disruptions between the Velostrata management appliance and the ESXi host on which the workload is running.

Note: The issue will resolve itself after 1-2 hours.

#131550214: During Detach, the operation might fail with the following error message: "Operation was canceled".

Workaround: Retry the Detach operation.

#131650367: When performing a detach after a cancel detach operation, the action may fail.

Workaround: Retry the operation.

#131649978: In the event of certain system failures, Velostrata components disconnect from vCenter. In this case, an event may not be sent, resulting in the alarm either not being set properly or not being cleared properly.

Workaround: Clear the alarm manually in vCenter.

#131532549: For workloads with a Windows machine using a retail license, when returning from the cloud, the license is not present.

Workaround: Reinstall the license.

#131555885: vCenter "Export OVA" operation is available when the VM in cloud is running in cache mode, however, this operation results in a corrupted OVA.

Workaround: Only create OVA after the detach.

#131647857: In rare cases, when a cloud component instance is created and system fails before it is tagged, the instance will remain untagged. This will not allow full clean-up or repair of the CE.

Workaround: Manually tag the instance, and then run "Repair".

#131537125: Cloud Extension high availability does not work for workloads running Ubuntu OS with LVM configuration.

Workaround: Update the kernel to 3.13.0-161 or higher.

#131560126: Suse12: Due to a bug in SUSE kernel older than 4.2, configurations that include BTRFS mounts with subvolumes are not supported.

Workaround: Upgrade to SUSE version with Kernel >=4.2 (SP2).

#131533480: When using the Create Cloud Extension wizard, using an illegal HTTP proxy address will not generate a warning message.

Workaround: Delete the CE and then create the CE with a valid HTTP proxy address.

#131647654: Run on-premises operation succeeded but the status is marked as failed with error "Failed to consolidate snapshots"

Workaround: Consolidate snapshots via vCenter, and clear the error manually.

#131558198: PowerShell client for cloud to cloud Runbook reports errors when running on PowerShell 3.0

Workaround: Upgrade to PowerShell 4.0

#131533056: When migrating RHEL 7.4 from AWS to Google Cloud, Google Cloud agent will not be installed automatically.

Workaround: Manually remove the AWS agent and install Google Cloud agent

#131532713: After Offline Migration of Windows 2003R2, if a NIC is manually deleted, it may be impossible to auto-detect and automatically reinstall it.

Workaround: The VM storage can be attached to a different VM, and the NIC Registry entry could be imported manually using a similar VM as a reference. Contact support for assistance.

#131532666: Linux versions running with kernel version 2.6.32 may experience a kernel panic on ephemeral storage access failures; these are more likely while streaming over iSCSI.

Workaround: Upgrade your kernel. The issue will also reduce in likelihood after Detach.

#131532846: Certain firewalls and anti-viruses may cause Windows VMs to fail when moved to cloud by blocking iSCSI traffic.

Workaround: Disable the affecting service while migrating and reinstall after Detach.

#131532882: In certain cases, initiating Run in Cloud during a Windows update may cause the update to terminate abruptly and cause a failure to boot in the cloud.

Workaround: Allow the system to finish Windows update and/or suspend Windows updates before migrating.

#135664281: When completing or canceling Azure to Google Cloud migration, if Velostrata Management failed to start the importer, Velostrata-created resources may be left in the original instance's resource group.

#133137658: Scenario: No network connection between Migration Manager and VSphere

Customer Impact: RunInCloud task will stay stuck due to failure in call to getReadSessions on VSphere.

Workaround: Fix the network connection. If not, cancel the task and try again.

#135573857 Scenario: When moving a VM back on-prem with "force" flag, failure to consolidate snapshot will cause the VM to remain as managed by Velostrata. RunInCloud on the same VM may fail since it is not allowed on managed VMs.

Workaround: Wait a couple of minutes and try again.

#137082702: In rare cases, the Cancel detach operation succeeds but the VM instance will fail to start.

Workaround: Move the instance back and move it again to the cloud.

#187887258: Installing the Linux prep-package and then upgrading the kernel will result in failure to boot in cloud.

Workaround: If you're upgrading your kernel, install the prep-package package after the upgrade.