Need to migrate Amazon EC2 Instances to VMware infrastructure

[ManivelR]

Hi Guys,

I need to migrate Amazon EC2 Instances to  VMware infrastructure.

Apart from VMware converter,is there any other options available to do this migration? also for bulk VMs...

I see one KB from VMware.It refers VMware converter only.

Please advise.

Thank you,

Manivel RR

[ebernard · Accepted solution]

Manivel,

I've answered to a quite similar request on this forum, please have a look, but long story short:

AWS Import/export tool works if EC2 instance was initially converted from VMware to AWS. Other way to do it is the tool you mention, I've heard we can also convert from AMI to vSphere.

Otherwise, you need to reinstall your app into VMware, since this is a tricky process to convert from EC2.

Emmanuel

[ManivelR]

Thanks much for your response.

[ebernard]

Manivel

If I successfully answered to your question, please set it as solved and mark my answer as useful.

thanks

[krunallathiya]

Exporting as a VM is useful when you want to deploy a copy of an Amazon EC2 instance in your on-site virtualization environment. You can export most EC2 instances to Citrix Xen, Microsoft Hyper-V, or VMware vSphere.

Cloud migration is the technique of transferring data, applications, and other business components to a cloud computing environment. Cloud migration is the process of moving digital business operations into the cloud. When organizations move their data and apps from their on-premises to the cloud, this process is called cloud migration.

To export a VM from Amazon EC2, first meet the following prerequisites.

• Install the AWS CLI. For more information, see the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.
• Create an Amazon S3 bucket for storing the exported instances or choose an existing bucket. The bucket must be in the Region where you want to export your VMs. For more information, see the Amazon Simple Storage Service Console User Guide.
• Attach an access control list (ACL) to your S3 bucket containing the following grants. For more information, see Managing Access with ACLs in the Amazon Simple Storage Service Developer Guide.
  • For Grantee, provide the appropriate Region-specific canonical account ID:

    Africa (Cape Town)

    3f7744aeebaf91dd60ab135eb1cf908700c8d2bc9133e61261e6c582be6e33ee

    Asia Pacific (Hong Kong)

    97ee7ab57cc9b5034f31e107741a968e595c0d7a19ec23330eae8d045a46edfb

    Europe (Milan)

    04636d9a349e458b0c1cbf1421858b9788b4ec28b066148d4907bb15c52b5b9c

    Middle East (Bahrain)

    aa763f2cf70006650562c62a09433f04353db3cba6ba6aeb3550fdc8065d3d9f

    China (Beijing)

    834bafd86b15b6ca71074df0fd1f93d234b9d5e848a2cb31f880c149003ce36f

    AWS GovCloud (US)

    af913ca13efe7a94b88392711f6cfc8aa07c9d1454d4f190a624b126733a5602

    All other Regions

    c4d8eabf8db69dbe46bfe0e517100c554f01200b104d59cd408e777ba442a322

  • READ_ACP permission
  • WRITE permission

I hope this helps.

Best Regards,

[milanpatel78]

VM Import/Export enables you to easily import virtual machine images from your existing environment to Amazon EC2 instances and export them back to your on-premises environment. This offering allows you to leverage your existing investments in the virtual machines that you have built to meet your IT security, configuration management, and compliance requirements by bringing those virtual machines into Amazon EC2 as ready-to-use instances. You can also export imported instances back to your on-premises virtualization infrastructure, allowing you to deploy workloads across your IT infrastructure.

VM Import/Export is available at no additional charge beyond standard usage charges for Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3.

To import your images, use the AWS CLI or other developer tools to import a virtual machine (VM) image from your VMware environment. If you use the VMware vSphere virtualization platform, you can also use the AWS Management Portal for vCenter to import your VM. As part of the import process, VM Import will convert your VM into an Amazon EC2 AMI, which you can use to run Amazon EC2 instances. Once your VM has been imported, you can take advantage of Amazon’s elasticity, scalability and monitoring via offerings like Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing and CloudWatch to support your imported images.

You can export previously imported EC2 instances using the Amazon EC2 API tools. You simply specify the target instance, virtual machine file format and a destination S3 bucket, and VM Import/Export will automatically export the instance to the S3 bucket. You can then download and launch the exported VM within your on-premises virtualization infrastructure.

You can import Windows and Linux VMs that use VMware ESX or Workstation, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix Xen virtualization formats. And you can export previously imported EC2 instances to VMware ESX, Microsoft Hyper-V or Citrix Xen formats. For a full list of supported operating systems, versions, and formats, please consult the VM Import section of the Amazon EC2 User Guide. We plan to add support for additional operating systems, versions and formats in the future.

[ne1scott67]

"You can export previously imported EC2 instances using the Amazon EC2 API tools. You simply specify the target instance, virtual machine file format and a destination S3 bucket, and VM Import/Export will automatically export the instance to the S3 bucket. You can then download and launch the exported VM within your on-premises virtualization infrastructure"

After fighting this for a few hours I find the word "simply" to be offensive.   AWS is not making this simple at all.

While the command itself might be straightforward I have been plagued with access denied and objects not existing try commands to convert to VDMK from S3 or from EC2 AMI and have had to open a ticket.