Migration to Nutanix - Part 4
In Part 1 I deployed the Nutanix Move appliance, in Part Two I tested a migration of a Windows 2019 Server from Hyper-V to AHV. Then in Part 3 I tested migration of Windows 2012 and Windows 2008 R2 from ESX to AHV.
In this lab I am going to migrate some legacy Linux systems from ESX to AHV, these are some of the oldest supported Linux versions for each distribution
• Ubuntu Linux 18 (64 bit)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 (64 bit)
• SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP3 (64 bit)
• Rocky 8.10
• Centos 7.0
See Nutanix documentation for supported systems
[IMPORTANT] Tests are limted to systems that use BIOS firmware, Nutanix CE has issues with UEFI, licenced or NFR versions of Prism do not have the same limitation.
Test Lab
Create New Migration Plan
From the Move Console create a New Migration Plan
Source and Target
Select ESX as source and Nutanix cluster as target
Select VMs
Select the Linux VMs (Note if any have a warning advising that migration is not supported)
After moving Rocky Linux 8 to the migration plan the warning below apears, due to lack of ESX support Move is unable to migrate it
Network
Select the target Network
Prepare VMs
Choose manual preparation as these are legacy systems, and we want to be sure the VirtIO drivers are installed prior to cutover
Copy the provided preparation script - Note your move ip address will be embedded
curl -sSk https://<Move IP>/resources/uvm/linux/esx_setup_uvm.sh | sudo sh /dev/stdin --move-address ’Move IP’ /--retain-ip --install-amd --reconfig-lvm --uninstall-vmware-tools --install-ngt
ssh to each system and run the script
Centos reports an issue
It is not possible to update the curl library to fix the problem as there are no longer any active repositories for Centos 7
While there is a vault archive, and theoretically its possible to point to it as the repository, it highlights the complexity of migrating legacy systems.
At this point I removed CentOS from the migration plan
VM Settings
Keep as default
Summary
Check the details and start the migration
The various stages of migration are indicated though View Details
Once data is seeded the option to cutover will appear
Open the console to each instance and test logon, and network connectivity
Conclusion
Older mainstream legacy Linux distributions typical in Enterprises are supported, however free distributions that are EOL such as Centos or Rocky Linux have challenges