VMware migration - AWS Transform
Capabilities and key featuresLimitations

VMware migration

AWS Transform can help you migrate your VMware environment to Amazon EC2 by using generative AI. This document provides an overview of AWS Transform and of the workflow of the migration process.

Capabilities and key features

AWS Transform offers the following capabilities and key features for migrating your VMware environment to AWS.

  • Three discovery options:

    • Assisted discovery of your VMware environment by using collectors from AWS Application Discovery Service.

    • Use the open-source Export for vCenter tool.

    • Importing independently collected discovery data.

  • AI-driven conversion of your source VMware network configuration to an Amazon VPC network architecture.

  • AI-driven generation of migration plans, including application grouping and suggested migration waves.

  • Rehosting your servers to run natively on Amazon EC2.

AWS Transform supports migrating Windows and Linux servers of supported operating systems. For the full list of supported operating systems, see Supported operating systems in the AWS Application Migration Service User Guide.

Limitations

AWS Transform has the following limitations:

  • AWS Transform does not support using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Dedicated Hosts or the Bring Your Own License (BYOL) licensing model. You may decide to switch tenancy and use BYOL licenses after you launch Amazon EC2 instances. For information, see License type conversions in License Manager in the License Manager User Guide.

  • AWS Transform migrates using the same IP/CIDR ranges as in your source environment. If you need to change the IP addresses or use DHCP for your Amazon EC2 instances, contact AWS Support.

  • If you stop a running migration job, and then ask the agent to restart it, the job will start again from the beginning and you will lose any progress you have made in the job. However, artifacts created in the job before restarting it will still be available.

  • You can specify one target AWS account and one target AWS Region per VMware migration job. To migrate waves to different target accounts or different Regions, create multiple VMware migration jobs, and use the same source account connector for your inventory. For information about the two types of account connectors, see AWS account connectors for VMware migrations.

  • To create a target account connector, the target AWS account must have a default VPC in your target AWS Region. The default VPC is used by AWS Transform to stage data from your source servers for replication to AWS. For information about how to create a default VPC if the account doesn't have one, see Create a default VPC in the Amazon VPC User Guide.

  • NSX imports are only supported for end-to-end migration jobs.

  • AWS Transform can execute a single network migration job for a given target AWS account and AWS Region at a time. When you generate a VPC configuration during the network migration step of your job, if other jobs are concurrently performing a network migration for the same account and Region, AWS Transform will delete the metadata associated with those other network migrations, and that might cause those other jobs to fail. For NSX environment migrations, this means AWS Transform cannot automatically associate security groups with migrated servers. However, any network resources (such as VPCs, Subnets, and security groups) already deployed to your target account and Region won't be deleted. We recommend you complete the first job before generating a VPC configuration in another job for the same target account and Region.