Discover, collect, and assess VMware VMs for migration
Learn how to download the Migration Center discovery client CLI and use it to remotely discover, collect, and assess virtual machine (VM) instances running on VMware for migration and containerization.
You can generate offline assessment reports in a user-friendly HTML format. These reports display the results for each of the migration targets and outlines actions to take to eliminate blockers and risks.
Before you begin
Provision a Linux machine to download and run the
mcdc
CLI. The Linux machine must have the following minimum requirements:glibc
version 2.25 or later- 4 GB RAM and 10 GB disk space
- Network connectivity to vCenter and ESX hosts
Ensure that you have a vSphere user with the following permissions:
- Read privileges to VMs
- Read privileges to all the ESX hosts
- Guest operation modifications
- Guest operation program execution
- Guest operation queries
Ensure that you have a user with administrator or root rights to all the target guest VMs.
Download mcdc
CLI
Connect to the Linux machine:
ssh MACHINE_IP
Replace MACHINE_IP with the IP address of your Linux machine.
Download the latest version of the
mcdc
CLI and make it executable:curl -O "https://mcdc-release.storage.googleapis.com/$(curl -s https://mcdc-release.storage.googleapis.com/latest)/mcdc" chmod +x mcdc
Perform VMware inventory discovery
Run the inventory discovery:
./mcdc discover vsphere -u USERNAME --url https://VSPHERE_URL
Replace the following:
- USERNAME: your vCenter username
- VSPHERE_URL: the URL for your vCenter Server instance or the vSphere Client
The output of the
discover
command looks like the following:[+] Found 13 VMs Collecting data... 13 / 13 [---------------------------------------------------] 100.00% 5 p/s [✓] Collection completed.
Perform guest discovery on all discovered VMs
Run the guest discovery:
./mcdc discover vsphere guest all --url https://VSPHERE_URL \ -u VCENTER_USER --vm-user VM_USER
Replace the following:
- VCENTER_USER: the vCenter server user
- VM_USER: the VM user
When prompted, enter the password for the VCENTER_USER and VM_USER.
Generate reports to visualize the assessment
Generate a summary report:
./mcdc report --format html > Summary_Report.html
Generate a detailed report:
./mcdc report --format html --full > Detailed_Report.html
HTML files named
Summary_Report.html
andDetailed_Report.html
are created. Open the reports in a browser.
Clean up
There are no charges associated with running the mcdc
CLI.
However, you can delete the collected data from the local database.
Delete the
mcdc
CLI data:./mcdc discover purge-db -db DATABASE_NAME
Replace DATABASE_NAME with the path to the database where the collected data is stored. Typically, it is in the same directory where you downloaded the
mcdc
CLI.
What's next
- Learn how to migrate a Linux VM.
- Learn more about the
mcdc
CLI.