At OpenNebula Systems, our mission is to provide reliable tools that simplify and enhance cloud infrastructure management. OneSwap, our VM migration tool, has been instrumental in helping businesses to transition their virtual machines from VMware vCenter to OpenNebula KVM with minimal disruption.

Recently, one of our valued customers, Encore Technologies, a data center and comprehensive IT services provider, shared their experience using OneSwap, along with impressive benchmarking data from their real-world deployments. Their results showcase the capabilities of OneSwap in complex environments and highlight how automation can further streamline the migration process.

Infrastructure Overview: Built for Efficiency

Encore Technologies operates with an optimized infrastructure that plays a critical role in their migration success:

• 10GB network connections on both VMware and OpenNebula environments.
• ISCSI storage for VMware hosts and NFS storage for OpenNebula hosts.
• Separate networks for VMware and OpenNebula that do not require passing through a firewall, facilitating smooth and efficient data transfers.

With this setup, OneSwap has effectively managed their migrations with minimal network bottlenecks and consistent performance across multiple transitions.

Benchmarking Data: Key Insights from Real-World Migrations

Encore Technologies provided detailed data from their migration processes, offering valuable insights into OneSwap’s performance across various operating systems and workloads.

Windows VM Migrations:

• Approximately 90% of their Windows VMs are standard with a single disk averaging 150GB.
• By limiting to three simultaneous migrations, they achieved an average migration time of 40 to 60 minutes per VM.

This strategy allows them to optimize performance while ensuring reliable migrations. The time required to migrate each VM is primarily influenced by disk size, rather than the operating system, emphasizing the importance of effective workload distribution.

Linux VM Migrations:

• Similarly, 90% of their Linux VMs have a disk size of around 60GB.
• For these Linux machines, the average migration time ranged from 15 to 30 minutes.

Larger workloads have been handled just as effectively. For instance, Encore Technologies successfully migrated a 1.5TB Linux database VM, completing the process in approximately 8 hours. This demonstrates that OneSwap is capable of handling both smaller, standard VMs and more complex, larger workloads when necessary.

Automation in Action: Enhancing OneSwap’s Capabilities

Encore Technologies took their migration process a step further by integrating automation through StackStorm. By developing a custom plugin for OpenNebula, they automated much of their VM migration workflow. This integration allowed them to manage multiple migrations with even greater efficiency, reducing manual intervention and accelerating the overall process.

While OneSwap simplifies the VM migration experience, Encore Technologies’ use of StackStorm highlights the potential for further automation and customization. By combining these solutions, they’ve been able to maintain their migration benchmarks while scaling their operations effectively.

Why OneSwap is the Right Choice for OpenNebula Users

Encore Technologies’ insights are a testament to OneSwap’s adaptability and performance. Whether managing standard workloads or larger, more complex systems, OneSwap ensures an efficient and dependable migration process.

By leveraging OneSwap alongside automation solutions like StackStorm, organizations can create migration workflows tailored to their specific needs, minimizing downtime and operational disruptions.

At OpenNebula Systems, we’re proud to offer OneSwap as part of our toolkit, empowering businesses to confidently transition from VMware to OpenNebula KVM, regardless of the scale or complexity of their workloads. For a smooth migration to OpenNebula, check out our webinar “Simplify VM Migration to OpenNebula” and whitepaper “Migrating from VMware to OpenNebula”. These resources offer key insights to streamline your cloud management.