Nutanix Xtract – an easy way to migrate to Nutanix – Part 1

Source: Nutanix documentation

Migration to Nutanix Acropolis from VMware vSphere is still a hot topic. Customers do see value in Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (aka Nutanix AHV) and looking for solutions which will help them move to new platform quickly.

To makes this journey easier Nutanix developed migration tool called Nutanix Xtract for VMs. Nutanix Xtract is an excellent migration tool which makes the whole process seamless and very easy to complete. Very intuitive and clear user interface with self-explanatory widgets makes migration experience seamless and as easy as it can only be.

Nutanix xTractVM main Dashboard

What Nutanix Xtract can do and how it makes the migration to Nutanix easier and cost effective.

• short cutover Windows (comparing to manual migration method)
• preserver virtual machine IP configuration
• agentless migration
• auto AHV  IO drivers insertion
• FREE to ALL Nutanix customers
• eliminates majority of manual tasks
• easy roll-back
• batch migrations

How does Nutanix Xtract work?

Nutanix Xtract leverages storage API on VMware vSphere (CBT) to track data changes and transfer data between both systems. Data is being transferred from ESXi hosts via Nutanix Xtract appliance onto Nutanix AHV cluster.

Fist data copy is full copy and remaining copies are differential copies only, to make is more efficient – you have to have CBT enabled on VMware VM.

Requirements:

• Nutanix AOS versions:
  • AOS 5.1
  • AOS 5.5
  • AOS 5.8
  • AOS 5.9
  • AOS 5.10
• VMware vSphere
  • vSphere 5.1
  • vSphere 5.5
  • vSphere 6
  • vSphere 6.5
  • vSpher 6.7
• Microsoft Hyper-V
  • Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V role (Standalone and Cluster)
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V role (Standalone and Cluster)
  • Windows Server 2016 with Hyper-V role (Standalone and Cluster)
  • Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 (Standalone and Cluster)
  • Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 (Standalone and Cluster)
  • Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2016 (Standalone and Cluster)
• Public cloud
  • Amazon AWS supported guest OS
    • Windows Server 2012R2
    • Windows Server 2016
    • RHEL 7.3 to 7.5
    • CentOS 7.3 to 7.5
    • Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 18.04
• Source virtual machine requirements
  • installed and up to date VMware tools
  • enable Change Block tracking on source VM
  • virtual hardware version 7 or newer
• Supported guest OS
  • • Windows 2016 Standard, 2016 Datacenter
  • • Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016
  • • Windows 32-bit operating systems
  • • CentOS 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3
  • • Ubuntu 12.04.5, 14.04.x, 16.04.x, 16.10, Server, Desktop (32-bit and 64-bit)
  • • FreeBSD 9.3, 10.0, 10.1,10.2, 10.3, 11.0
  • • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 / SP4
  • • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Oracle Linux 6.x, 7.x

  Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10

  • RHEL 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, 6.8, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3
• Network port requirements
  • See Nutanix network port requirements

NOTE: full list of requirements can be found in Nutanix documentation

Deployment Nutanix Move VM

Nutanix Xtract deployment is very easy. In the folder, you can find several files including qcow2 file (disk image)  and few executable files. So depending on the system you run the different executable:

• cli-darwin-amd64-1.1.3 – MacOS
• cli-linux-amd64-1.1.3 – Linux
• cli-windows-amd64-1.1.3.exe – Windows

PS D:\downloads\Nutanix\xtract-vm-1.1.3-release> dir


    Directory: D:\downloads\Nutanix\xtract-vm-1.1.3-release


Mode                LastWriteTime     Length Name
----                -------------     ------ ----
-----         2/26/2018  10:46 PM   18776480 cli-darwin-amd64-1.1.3
-----         2/26/2018  10:46 PM   18985868 cli-linux-amd64-1.1.3
-----         2/26/2018  10:46 PM   18995712 cli-windows-amd64-1.1.3.exe
-a---         3/19/2018   8:10 AM        979 cli.json
-----         2/26/2018  10:46 PM  168358875 xtract-vm-1.1.3-1.x86_64.rpm
-----         2/26/2018  10:46 PM  771926528 xtract-vm-1.1.3.qcow2
-----         2/26/2018  10:46 PM         33 xtract-vm-1.1.3.qcow2.md5
-----         2/26/2018  10:46 PM        709 xtract-vm-cloudinit-script

NOTE: BELOW INSTRUCTIONS WORKS ONLY FOR XTRACT 1.X

You can deploy Nutanix XtractVM with static IP address or DHCP, both configs are fully supported.

Connect to Nutanix cluster

PS D:\downloads\Nutanix\xtract-vm-1.1.3-release> .\cli-windows-amd64-1.1.3.exe -c <Nutanix_Cluster_IP_address>

Deploy Nutanix Xtract VM with DHCP

deploy-vm vm-container <container_name> vm-network <virtual_network_name> ip-address dhcp

Deploy Nutanix Xtract VM with static IP address

deploy-vm vm-container <container_name> vm-network <network_name> ip-address <static_IP_address> netmask <netmask> gateway <gateway_IP_address> dns1 <DNS_IP_address> dns2 <DNS_IP_address>

See video for more details

Appendix:

• Nutanix Xtract 1.X documentation
• Nutanix xtract 2.0 documentation

Changelog:

• Oct 5, 2018 – in Xtract version 1.1.7 Nutanix added support for :
  • vSphere 6.7
  • FreeBSD
  • VirtIO 1.1.3
  • VMware Tools 10.2.0
• Dec 19 2018 – Nutanix xtract 2.0
  • Amazon AWS VMs migration support
    • Windows Server 2012 R2, 2016
    • RHEL 7.3 to 7.5
    • CentOS 7.3 to 7.5
    • Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, and 18.04
• May 2019
  • added:
    • Hyper-V support matrix