Understanding and changing storage policies

This topic covers storage policy options and how to change storage policies.

When Migrate for Compute Engine migrates a VM from vSphere, all changes on the disk attached to the Google Cloud instance persist back to the source disk. For migrations from Amazon EC2 and Azure, writing changes back to the source is not possible.

Write back mode (default)

In write back mode, Migrate for Compute Engine writes all disk changes made to the VM on Google Cloud back on-premises. Changes are buffered and synchronized once per hour or after 5 GB of changes (whichever comes first).

When you move a VM with this option enabled back to vSphere, Migrate for Compute Engine writes any data remaining in the buffer before restarting the VM. When Migrate for Compute Engine completes the move back, it deletes all interim snapshots and virtual disks.

Write isolation mode

In write isolation mode, Migrate for Compute Engine does not write storage data on-premises while the VM is running on Google Cloud.

Changing storage policy

You can change a VM's storage policy from vSphere by right-clicking the VM and selecting Reconfigure virtual machine.