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Chapter 6. Migrating virtual machines by using the Red Hat OpenShift web console

Use the MTV user interface to migrate virtual machines (VMs). It is located in the Virtualization section of the Red Hat OpenShift web console.

6.1. The MTV user interface
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The Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV) user interface is integrated into the OpenShift web console.

In the left panel, you can choose a page related to a component of the migration progress, for example, Providers. Or, if you are an administrator, you can choose Overview, which contains information about migrations and lets you configure MTV settings.

In pages related to components, you can click on the Projects list, which is in the upper-left portion of the page, and see which projects (namespaces) you are allowed to work with.

6.2. The MTV Overview page
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The Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV) Overview page displays system-wide information about migrations and a list of Settings you can change.

If you have Administrator privileges, you can access the Overview page by clicking Migration Overview in the Red Hat OpenShift web console.

The Overview page has 3 tabs:

  • Overview
  • YAML
  • Health
  • History
  • Settings

6.2.1. Overview tab
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The Overview tab is to help you quickly create providers and find information about the whole system:

  • In the upper pane, is the Welcome section, which includes buttons that let you open the Create provider UI for each vendor (VMware, Open Virtual Appliance, OpenStack, Red Hat Virtualization, and OpenShift Virtualization). You can close this section by clicking the Options menu kebab in the upper-right corner and selecting Hide from view. You can reopen it by clicking Show the welcome card in the upper-right corner.

  • In the center-left pane is a "donut" chart named Virtual machines. This chart shows the number of running, failed, and successful virtual machine migrations that MTV ran for the time interval that you select. You can choose a different interval by clicking the list in the upper-right corner of the pane. You can select a different interval by clicking the list. The options are: Last 24 hours, Last 10 days, Last 31 days, and All. By clicking on each division of the chart, you can navigate to the History tab for information about the migrations.

    Note

    Data for this chart includes only the most recent run of a migration plan that was modified due to a failure. For example, if a plan with 3 VMs fails 4 times, then this chart shows that 3 VMs failed, not 12.

  • In the center-right pane is an area chart named Migration history. This chart shows the number of migrations that succeeded, failed, or were running during the interval shown in the title of the chart. You can choose a different interval by clicking the Options menu kebab in the upper-right corner of the pane. The options are: Last 24 hours, Last 10 days, and Last 31 days. By clicking on each division of the chart, you can navigate to the History tab for information about the migrations.

  • In the lower-left pane is a "donut" chart named Migration plans. This chart shows the current number of migration plans grouped by their status. This includes plans that were not started, cannot be started, are incomplete, archived, paused, or have an unknown status. By clicking the Show all plans link, you can quickly navigate to the Migration plans page.

    Note

    Since a single migration might involve many virtual machines, the number of migrations performed using MTV might vary significantly from the number of migrated virtual machines.

  • In the lower-right pane is a table named MTV health. This table lists all of the MTV pods. The most important one, forklift-controller, is first. The remaining pods are listed in alphabetical order. The View all link opens the Health tab. The status and creation time of each pod are listed. There is also a link to the logs of each pod.

6.2.2. YAML tab
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The YAML tab displays the ForkliftController custom resource (CR) that defines the operation of the MTV Operator. You can modify the CR in this tab.

6.2.3. Health tab
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The Health tab has two panes:

  • In the upper pane, there is a table named Health. It lists all the MTV pods. The most important one, forklift-controller, is first. The remaining pods are listed in alphabetical order. For each pod, the status, and creation time of the pod are listed, and there is a link to the logs of the pod.
  • In the lower pane, there is a table named Conditions. It lists the following possible types (states) of the MTV Operator, the status of the type, the last time the condition was updated, the reason for the update, and a message about the condition.

6.2.4. History tab
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The History tab displays information about migrations.

  • In the upper-left of the page, there is a filter that you can use to display only migrations of a certain status, for example, Succeeded.
  • To the right of the filter is the Group by plan toggle switch, which lets you display either all migrations or view only the most recent migration run per plan within the specified time range.

6.2.5. Settings tab
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The table that follows describes the settings that are visible in the Settings tab, their default values, and other possible values that can be set or chosen, if needed.

Expand
Table 6.1. MTV settings
SettingDescriptionDefault valueAdditional values

Maximum concurrent VM migrations

Varies with provider as follows:

  • For all migrations except OVA or VMware migrations: The maximum number of disks that MTV can transfer simultaneously.
  • For OVA migrations: The maximum number of VMs that MTV can migrate simultaneously.

  • For VMware migrations, the setting has the following meanings:

    • Cold migration:

      • To local OpenShift Virtualization: VMs for each ESXi host that can migrate simultaneously.
      • To remote OpenShift Virtualization: Disks for each ESXi host that can migrate simultaneously.

    • Warm migration: Disks for each ESXi host that can migrate simultaneously.

      See Configuring the controller_max_vm_inflight parameter for a detailed explanation of this setting.

20.

Adjustable by either using the + and - keys to set a different value or by clicking the textbox and entering a new value.

Controller main container CPU limit

The CPU limit that is allocated to the main controller container, in milliCPUs (m).

500 m.

Adjustable by selecting another value from the list. Options: 200 m, 500 m, 2000 m, 8000 m.

Controller main container memory limit

The memory limit that is allocated to the main controller container in mebibytes (Mi).

800 Mi.

Adjustable by selecting another value from the list. Options: 200 Mi, 800 Mi, 2000 Mi, 8000 Mi.

Controller inventory container memory limit

The memory limit that is allocated to the inventory controller container in mebibytes (Mi).

1000 Mi.

Adjustable by selecting another value from the list. Options: 400 Mi, 1000 Mi, 2000 Mi, 8000 Mi.

Precopy internal (minutes)

The interval in minutes at which a new snapshot is requested before initiating a warm migration.

60 minutes.

Adjustable by selecting another value from the list. Options: 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 120 minutes.

Snapshot polling interval

The interval in seconds between which the system checks the status of snapshot creation or removal during a warm migration.

10 seconds.

Adjustable by choosing another value from the list. Options: 1 second, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 60 seconds.

Use the MTV user interface to migrate virtual machines (VMs) from the following providers:

  • VMware vSphere
  • Red Hat Virtualization (RHV)
  • OpenStack
  • Open Virtual Appliances (OVAs) that were created by VMware vSphere
  • OpenShift Virtualization clusters

For all migrations, you specify the source provider, the destination provider, and the migration plan. The specific procedures vary per provider.

Important

You must ensure that all prerequisites are met. For more information, see Prerequisites for migration.

VMware only: You must have the minimal set of VMware privileges.

VMware only: Creating a VMware Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK) image will increase migration speed.

6.4. Renaming virtual machines for migration
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You can rename source virtual machines (VMs) in the MTV UI to address naming conflicts. Renaming VMs ensures conformity with the Kubernetes-based naming conventions of Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.

In the OpenShift platform, all resource names, including VMs, must have DNS-compliant names. Valid names consist only of lowercase alphanumeric characters (a-z, 0-9) and hyphens (-). Names must not start or end with a hyphen or contain consecutive hyphens, and the length of a name is limited to 63 characters. The OpenShift API rejects noncompliant source VM names during the creation of the target VM.

Expand
Table 6.2. Examples of VM naming conflicts
Source VM nameNaming conflictNew target VM name

App_VM_01

Contains uppercase letters and underscores

app-vm-01

-app-server

Starts with a hyphen

app-server

app--server

Contains consecutive hyphens

app-server

long-name-for-server-that-contains-more-than-sixty-three-characters

Exceeds the 63-character length limit

db-server-prod-01

Procedure

  1. In the Red Hat OpenShift web console, click Migration for Virtualization > Migration plans.
  2. Open the Plan Details page for your migration plan.
  3. Click the Virtual Machines tab to view a table of all VMs from the configured source provider.
  4. If the Target name column does not already show in the VM table, click Manage columns to select Target name and display the column.
  5. Identify non-conformant names in the list of VMs by checking the alerts in the Concerns column.
  6. To rename a VM, click the More icon at the end of the row for the VM, and click Edit target name.
  7. Enter and save a new name for the VM. Ensure that the new name consists only of alphanumeric characters (a-z, 0-9) and hyphens. Ensure that the name does not start or end with a hyphen or contain consecutive hyphens and is less than 63 characters long.

6.5. Configuring the target power state of VMs
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You can configure the post-migration power state of VMs in advance of a migration. Plan for VMs to start up automatically, remain powered off, or preserve the power state of the source VM. For example, if you are migrating a VM that is running in the source environment, you can ensure that the VM is powered off post-migration to preserve start-up dependencies between VMs.

You can set the power state of a target VM to off, on, or auto either in the MTV UI or in the spec.vms section of the Plan Custom Resource (CR). The auto setting preserves the power state of the source VM.

You can apply different post-migration power states to different VMs in a single migration plan.

Procedure

  1. Configure the power state for target VMs in the MTV UI.

    1. In the Create migration plan wizard, navigate to Other settings under Additional setup in the left navigation pane.
    2. Scroll down to VM target power state.
    3. Select Auto, Powered on, or Powered off from the dropdown menu to apply the setting to all VMs in your migration plan. You can customize the power state for selected VMs when your plan is created.
    4. Click Next, and verify that the correct power state shows for VM target power state under Other settings (optional).
    5. When you create your migration plan, click Migration plans in the left navigation menu, and open the Plan Details page for your migration plan.
    6. Verify that the correct power state shows for the VM target power state field. You can click the Edit icon to change the power state.
    7. Click the Virtual Machines tab to view a table of all VMs from the configured source provider.
    8. Click Manage columns to select Target power state and display the column.
    9. To change the power state for a specific VM, click the More icon at the end of the row for the VM, and click Edit target power state.
    10. Select and save a new power state for the VM.

  2. Configure the power state for target VMs in the YAML file.

    1. In the Red Hat OpenShift web console, click Migration for Virtualization > Migration plans.
    2. Open the Plan Details page for your migration plan.
    3. Click the YAML tab to open the Plan custom resource (CR) for your migration plan.

    4. For each VM under vms in the YAML file, enter the target power state. In this example, you set a different target power state for each VM:

      Example: 

        vms:
    - id: vm-1
      targetPowerState: off
    - id: vm-2
      targetPowerState: on
    - id: vm-3
      targetPowerState: auto
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