Running and migrating VMs

This page describes how to use the Migrate for Compute Engine 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 Google Cloud or starting a migration

  1. From the vSphere Web Client, select the desired Virtual Machine.
  2. Right-click that 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.

    Cloud Instance screen, showing available instance sizes and recommendations for them

  6. Select the Project and Instance Type.

    Migrate for Compute Engine suggests instance sizes that approximate the capacity and performance of the existing VM. For information on how recommendations are processed, see Cloud Instance Rightsizing.

  7. Click Next. The Storage Policy screen appears.

  8. For the Storage Policy, select Write Back or Write Isolation.

  9. Click Next. The Networking screen appears.

    Networking Screen, showing configuration options for your cloud instance's networks

  10. Select the Subnet on Google Cloud for the VM.

  11. Enter any Network Tags (comma separated) which will be applied to the migrated VM.

  12. (Optional) Select the Instance Service Account .

  13. 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.
  14. From the Edge Node drop-down list, select the primary node in your Cloud Extension that will handle the migration.

  15. For External IP, select:

    • None, to not assign an external IP address
    • Ephemeral, for an automatically assigned external IP.
    • Static, to assign an external IP previously created on the Google Cloud console,
  16. Click Next.

  17. If you are performing a migrate operation:

    • Select the Disk Type for your instance and Service Account that hosts the worker instance handling the migration.
    • Click Next. The Summary screen appears.
  18. 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.

For more information about monitoring your VMs, see Monitoring overview.

After migrating a VM to Google Cloud

Storage migrations take several hours. When the Migration Wizard is completed, the VM is ready to detach. To continue, see Detaching a VM.