About Migrate to Containers

Use Migrate to Containers to modernize traditional applications away from virtual machine (VM) instances and into native containers that run on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), GKE Enterprise clusters, or Cloud Run platform. You can migrate workloads from VMs that run on VMware or Compute Engine, giving you the flexibility to containerize your existing workloads with ease. Migrate to Containers supports modernization of IBM WebSphere, JBoss, Apache, Tomcat, WordPress, Windows IIS applications, as well as containerisation of Linux-based applications.

Migrate to Containers offers two different methods to migrate your workloads:

  • Migrate using your local machine: You can use the Migrate to Containers CLI for fast and easy modernization of application components that run on VMs. This is a lightweight method to migrate your workloads using your local machine. It generates artifacts that you can deploy to GKE, GKE Enterprise, or Cloud Run. The offline mode lets you perform migrations of your Linux-based workloads locally and can work on your local network without pulling resources from the internet during runtime. This method is best suited for app owners.

    For more information about this method, see Migrate to Containers CLI architecture.

  • Migrate using Google Cloud processing clusters: You can use a GKE or GKE Enterprise processing cluster to run the Migrate to Containers components that perform the transformations required during workload migration from a source VM to the target container. This method is best suited for infrastructure owners.

    For more information about this method, see Migrate to Containers architecture.

You can migrate applications from supported source platforms to the following:

About GKE and GKE Enterprise clusters

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters provide secured and managed Kubernetes services with autoscaling and multi-cluster support. GKE lets you deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications on Kubernetes, powered by Google Cloud.

GKE Enterprise is an application management platform that provides a consistent development and operations experience for cloud and on-premises environments. GKE Enterprise includes a set of core components, including the following:

  • GKE clusters: Container orchestration and management service for running Kubernetes clusters in both cloud and on-premises environments. GKE Enterprise relies on GKE clusters on Google Cloud or Google Distributed Cloud Virtual for Bare Metal to manage Kubernetes installations in the environments where you intend to deploy your applications.

  • Config Management: Defines, automates, and enforces policies across environments to meet your organization's security and compliance requirements.

  • Anthos Service Mesh: Manages and secures traffic between services while monitoring, troubleshooting, and improving application performance.

  • GKE Enterprise security: Secures your hybrid and multi-cloud deployments by providing consistent controls across your environments.

About Cloud Run

Cloud Run is a managed compute platform that lets you run stateless containers via web requests or Pub/Sub events. The simplified Linux service manager lets you deploy your migrated container workloads on Cloud Run.

Hands-on labs

Use the following labs to create a development environment, including a sample VM to migrate (you do not need an existing Google Account to run these labs):

What's next