Converting to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure from VMware

When restoring VMware virtual machines from backup, you can choose to restore the VMs to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

You can use this feature to migrate existing virtual machines running on premises to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, providing the following benefits:

Run production applications in the cloud.
Use cloud resources for development and test environments.
Use the cloud for disaster recovery.

You can perform VM conversions from streaming backups, from secondary copies, or from IntelliSnap backup copies. You cannot perform a conversion from a Snap copy.

Before You Begin

Add a hypervisor for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Add required permissions for the OCID tenant and user.
The proxy for the conversion must be an instance running in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and must reside in the availability domain where the destination instance is being created.

VMware Source VMs

If a VMware source VM uses Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) boot firmware, you cannot convert the VM from VMware to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Make the following changes before backing up source VMs that are to be converted:
- For Windows source VMs, perform the following operations:
  - Enable Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connection for the VM.
  - In environments that include a firewall, open a port for RDP connections.
- For Linux VMs that have more than one volume, perform the following operations:
  - Ensure that paravirtual drivers are included as described in Preparing Linux VMs for Conversion.
  - Enable serial console access on the VM.
    
    For more information, see Preparing a Custom Linux Image for Emulation Mode.
  - Install the iSCSI initiator (iscsidm) on the VM, if it is not installed already.
    
    If yum is the package manager used, the command is:
```
sudo yum install iscsi-initiator-utils
```

Procedure

Convert a VM to Oracle Cloud by performing a restore from the backup of the VMware source VM:

From the navigation pane, go to Solutions > Virtualization.

The Hypervisors tab appears.
Click the VMware hypervisor that hosts the virtual machines.

The hypervisor details page appears. The VM groups area displays summary information for any existing VM groups.
In the VM groups area, click Restore for the VM group that contains the virtual machine.
In the Select restore type page, select Full virtual machine to restore one or more full virtual machines.
In the Restore page, expand the tree on the left and select the objects to be restored on the right. Select an item or click on an entry in the Name column to browse within an item.

In the top right corner of the page, a "Showing" message indicates what backup data is being displayed. You can click the down arrow beside this message and select any of the following options:
- Show latest backups: Only display data for the most recent backups.
- Show backups as of a specific date: Only display data up to the date you specify.
- Show backups for a date range: Only display data within the data range you specify.
Click Restore.
In the Restore options dialog box, provide the requested information:
- Restore as: Select Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
- Destination hypervisor: Select the destination hypervisor from the list.
- Proxy client: Select the VSA proxy for the conversion from the list.
  
  The proxy must be an instance running in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
- Power on instance after restore: Select this option to start converted instances automatically.
If you are converting multiple VMs, you can select the All Instances tab to specify options for all of the instances in the job, or a specific instance to specify options for that instance.
- Change instance display name to: (when converting a single VM) Type a new name to be used for the converted instance.
- Enable edit destination instance name: (when converting multiple VMs) Select this option and enter a prefix or suffix to be added to the source VM name to create each destination instance name.
- Compartment: Select the compartment where the converted instance should be created.
- Shapes: Select one of the following shapes to identify the configuration to be used for the converted instance (the shape includes the number of cores and the RAM size for the instance):
  - VM.Standard1.1
  - VM.Standard1.2
  - VM.Standard1.4
  - VM.Standard1.8
  - VM.Standard1.16
  - Auto: Use the closest approximation to the configuration of the source VM.
- Availability domain: Select the availability domain where the converted instance should be created.
  
  You must select the availability domain where the proxy client that is specified for the operation resides.
- Virtual cloud network: Select a virtual cloud network (VCN) that is available for the specified compartment.
- Subnet: Select a subnet that is defined for the specified availability domain.
- Staging bucket: Select a storage bucket that is available for the specified compartment.
- Create public IP: Select this option to generate a public IP address that can be used to communicate with the converted instance.
  
  The IP address is displayed with the instance in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure console after the conversion is completed.
Click Submit to run the restore job.

What to Do Next

Ensuring That Data Volumes are Usable
For Linux VMs: Ensuring That Linux VMs Start Successfully