1.1 About Workload Portability

PlateSpin Migrate automates the migration of workloads among three infrastructures: physical, virtual machine, and volume imaging.

Figure 1-1 Workload Portability

Table 1-1 Workload Portability Operations

Category of Operation

Migration Infrastructures

Workload Portability: Peer-to-peer

  • Physical to Virtual (P2V)

  • Virtual to Virtual (V2V)

  • Virtual to Physical (V2P)

  • Physical to Physical (P2P)

Workload Portability: Imaging

  • Physical to Image (P2I)

  • Virtual to Image (V2I)

  • Image to Virtual (I2V)

  • Image to Physical (I2P)

PlateSpin Migrate supports multiple workload types and virtualization platforms. Imaging is supported for workloads with Microsoft Windows operating systems. For a more detailed list of supported workloads and infrastructures, see Supported Configurations.

1.1.1 Business Applications for PlateSpin Migrate

PlateSpin Migrate is designed to be used for the following scenarios:

  • Consolidation. Automating large-scale migrations of physical machines to virtual machines, accelerating consolidation projects, and reducing administrative effort and errors.

  • Migration. Moving fully configured workloads from old hardware to new hardware without rebuilding the entire software stack.

  • Test Lab Deployment. Consolidating test lab workloads by running multiple virtual machines on a single VM host, quickly deploying virtual test lab environments with ease, and replicating an entire production environment in matter of hours or days.

  • Maintenance and Support Agreement Integrity. De-virtualizing workloads along with the applications installed on them and moving them back to physical machines over the network so that the support agreements can remain valid.

  • Machine Provisioning. Easily capturing an entire library of hardware-independent PlateSpin Images and deploying them to new infrastructures over the network without manually configuring the hardware, drivers, and so on.

  • Continuous Workload Optimization. Moving workloads to and from any geographical location, onto any platform, in any direction. Workloads can be virtualized or de-virtualized during ongoing and continuous optimization of resources.

1.1.2 Workload Migration Tasks

PlateSpin Migrate enables you to define, save, schedule, execute, and monitor the following migration tasks.

Table 1-2 PlateSpin Migrate Workload Migration Tasks

Task

Description

Copy Workload

Results in a virtual or physical duplicate of a selected physical or virtual workload, except that the new workload is assigned a new network identity. Use this migration task when you intend to keep the source workload operational.

Move Workload

Results in an exact virtual or physical duplicate of a selected physical or virtual workload. Use this migration task when you intend to retire or repurpose the original infrastructure.

Server Sync

Synchronizes a virtual or physical workload with another virtual or physical workload without transferring the entire source volume data over the network.

Capture Image

Creates an image of a physical or virtual workload as a single entity, in PlateSpin Image format.

Import Image

Imports third-party volume archives or raw volume data into a PlateSpin Image.

Deploy Image

Converts a PlateSpin Image into a booted or bootable workload on a physical or virtual machine.