Trilio's Approach

Overview

Architecture

Native Service to OpenStack

Trilio’s backup and recovery solution is an OpenStack native service similar to Nova, Cinder, Glance, etc. This software-only solution can be deployed using OpenStack distribution-specific DevOps scripts. For example, Trilio’s solution is native to the RHOSP platform and can be deployed and managed using Red Hat Director.

Highly Scalable

We extended Trilio’s architecture to support migration at scale. Since Trilio migrates the VM from VMware ESXi to the OpenStack compute node, the solution scales with your VMware/OpenStack without suffering from performance bottlenecks.

Self-Service and Inline Migration

The process of migration usually involves moving virtual machines from a source platform to a target platform, however, the strategy to achieve this should be considered carefully.

If the migration process is initiated from the target platform, it is called inline migration. Trilio advocates inline migration as it helps map organizational structures such as data centers/clusters/folders in VMware to regions/domains/projects in OpenStack.

A project owner with sufficient privileges to their VMware resources can migrate the VMs to their project. If every project owner can migrate their resources from VMware, it provides better control to cloud architects to orchestrate the migration.

If the migration process is initiated from an outside source or target platform, it is called out-of-band migration. Out-of-band demands a centralized approach and places constraints on how cloud architects can design their OpenStack clouds.

Horizon Dashboard Plugin

A very intuitive tenant dashboard for the tenant to manage their migrations. If you want to migrate to KubeVirt, Red Hat’s MTV solution can be helpful.

Command Line Interface

The sub-commands for the migration feature are available as:

  vcenters-list                          List all the VCenters configured for migration.
  migration-plans-list                   List all the migration_plans of current project.
  migration-plan-create                  Creates a migration plan.
  migration-plan-discover-vms            discover VM's of a migration plan.
  migration-plan-get-by-vmid             List the migration_plan for given vm id
  migration-plan-get-import-list         Get list of migration_plans to be imported.
  migration-plan-import                  Import all migration plan records from backup store.
  migration-plan-modify                  Modify a migration plan.
  migration-plan-show                    Show details about a migration plan.
  migration-plan-delete                  Remove a migration plan.
  migrations-list                        List all the migrations for the migration plan.
  migration-create                       Execute a migration plan.
  migration-resume                       Resume the migration.
  migration-show                         Show details about migration of the migration plan
  migration-cancel                       Cancel the migration.
  migration-delete                       Delete the migration.
  

Migration APIs look and feel like OpenStack API. Each tenant can source their cloud rc and start using migration cli commands. CLI also helps users to extend their Ansible scripting for migration.

Migration Types

Trilio migration functionality supports three types of migrations

Dry-run

Dry-run lets users create the VMs on OpenStack with storage volumes, networking, and security groups attached. It does a migration of VM data from VMware to OpenStack by taking a snapshot of the VM without shutting it down and hence, does not guarantee the data/application consistency. Unlike Cold and Warm migration, there is no disruption to the VMware VMs during this migration. It is a handy feature for users to test VMs and their interconnectivity before completely migrating VMs.

Cold Migration

Cold migration shuts down the VMware VMs and migrates the VMs to OpenStack. Depending on the size of the data to migrate, cold migration can take minutes to hours to complete, and during the entire duration, the applications are unavailable. Cold migration is more disruptive than warm migration.

Warm Migration

Warm migration leverages VMware snapshot and Change Block Tracking functionality to migrate VMs with minimal disruption. It first takes a VM snapshot and copies the full snapshot data to OpenStack. Depending on the size of the data, this upload operation may take a few minutes to a few hours. During this period, the VM may have written additional data blocks, which are then captured by taking a second snapshot of the VM.

At this point, the cutover occurs as per the option selected by the user during invoking the migration:

• Manual cutover (default): After the second snapshot upload, the migration process pauses. The user must manually resume the migration once they are ready for the source VM to be shut down and the final data upload to be performed.

• Automatic cutover: After the second snapshot upload, the source VM is automatically shut down, and the final data upload is performed without user intervention.

In both cases, after the final snapshot is uploaded, the corresponding VM is started on OpenStack. Warm migration therefore provides significantly less downtime compared to cold migration.

Conclusion

Trilio's support for migrating VMware VMs to OpenStack is recognized as an industry-leading solution. Its scalability and ability to be deployed organization-wide scale make it a valuable choice for businesses. The self-paced approach provided by Trilio allows application owners to experiment with migration options and gain confidence before performing the final migration. In the context of businesses transitioning from vendor lock-in to open-source technologies, Trilio's migration feature can be a helpful tool in accelerating the transition process.