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VM Conversion to Amazon EC2 Using Commvault Hotadd

You can convert a VMware, Azure, or Hyper-V VM to an Amazon EC2 instance using a Commvault Access Node running in AWS.

Requirements

General Requirements

  • For Windows VMs, the pagefile must be located on the C: drive.

  • For Linux VMs, fstab entries must use UUID instead of the device name.

Disk Space Requirements

  • 2 GB of available disk space on the OS disk for installing drivers and other software.

Requirements for Access Node Availability

The access node selected for the Commvault HotAdd method must be an Amazon EC2 instance in the same region as the destination instance.

The Access Node VM must be able to connect to ec2.amazonaws.com.

Note

For cross-hypervisor restores or replication from VMware to Amazon EC2, you can use an access node that runs on Windows or Linux. If you use an access node that runs on Linux, for both Windows and Linux guest VMs, the drivers must be installed on the source VM before performing the backup. Otherwise, the replication operation fails.

For more information, see Configuring a Firewall for an Access Node in the Cloud.

Configuring Source VMs for Commvault Hotadd

  • For Windows guest VMs, you can copy drivers that are required for AWS instances to the access node that is used for conversion or replication operations. During the conversion or replication operation, drivers are automatically installed on the destination guest instances.

  • For Windows VMs that use an access node that runs on Windows, Commvault attempts to copy required drivers automatically for conversion or replication to AWS instances, but automatic downloads might fail if a firewall is in place. If that occurs, you can copy required drivers to the access node that is used for the operation, and then retry the operation.

  • For Linux guest VMs that use an access node that runs on Linux, Commvault attempts to copy required drivers automatically for conversion or replication to AWS instances.

    To manually install drivers, see Preparing the Source VM.

    Note

    When converting the Linux source VM to AWS, you must use DHCP. If the source VMs use static IPs, use the import method instead. See, VM Conversion Using the Import Method.

HotAdd Restores

HotAdd restores for Amazon provide faster performance than traditional restores. By using an access node that is running on an Amazon instance, the restore operation can write directly to Elastic Block Storage (EBS) and inject Amazon drivers that are required for destination instances.

HotAdd restores are used for the following operations:

  • Restores

  • Live sync operations

  • Conversion from VMware to Amazon, for the following VMware guest operating systems:

    • Windows

      • Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (Standard, Web Server, Datacenter, Enterprise) (64-bit only)

        See, Installing Drivers for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Earlier for information about source VMs that run on a version of Windows Server earlier than Windows Server 2012 R2.

        Note

        For VM conversion or live sync replication of guest VMs that run Windows Server 2008 R2 and later versions, validation might fail for the converted instance in AWS. To resolve this issue, set the RealTimeIsUniversal registry key on the source VM as described in the AWS article Configure time settings for Windows Server 2008 and later, and then perform a new backup to use as the source for the conversion or replication.

      • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)

      • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only) (Nano Server installation not supported)

      • Microsoft Windows Server 2016 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)

      • Microsoft Windows Server 1709 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)

      • Microsoft Windows Server 1803 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)

      • Microsoft Windows Server 2019 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)

      • Microsoft Windows 10 (Home, Professional, Enterprise, Education) (US English) (64-bit only)

    • Linux

      • CentOS 6.x

      • CentOS 7.x

      • CentOS 8.x

      • Oracle Linux 6.x

      • Oracle Linux 7.x

      • Oracle Linux 8.x

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.x

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.x

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.x

      • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 and above

      • Ubuntu 14.04

      • Ubuntu 14.10

      • Ubuntu 15.04

      • Ubuntu 16.04

      • Ubuntu 16.10

      • Ubuntu 17.04

      • Ubuntu 18.04

      • Ubuntu 20.04

      • Ubuntu 21.10

      • Ubuntu 22.x

Support for Linux Driver Injection for VM Conversion to Amazon EC2

With automatic driver injection, you can recover, migrate and replicate Linux-based VMware, Hyper-V, and Azure VMs to Amazon EC2 instances. To ensure optimal performance, Commvault will modify the default initial ramdisk (initrd) to include the Amazon Paravirtual (Xen), NVMe, and Enhanced Networking (ENA) drivers.

Commvault supports the following:

  • Conversion to Paravirtual (PV) and Hardware Virtual Machine (HVM).

  • Automatic driver injection for the following versions of Linux, however guest VMs have to be from Red Hat distribution:

    • CentOS 7.x

    • CentOS 8.x

    • RHEL8

    • CentOS 7.x

    • Oracle Linux 7

    • Oracle Linux 8

For more information about the automatic driver injection process, see Automatically Inject Xen and Nitro Drivers for Linux Guest VMs.

Supported Volume and File System Types

Windows

Instances with volumes that use Master Boot Record (MBR) and GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning are supported.

Linux

Linux VMs that use one of the following for the root file system: ext2, ext3, ext4, Btrfs, JFS, or XFS.

HotAdd Restore Process

Windows:

  1. Create empty EBS volumes.

  2. Attach EBS volumes to access node.

    Up to 21 volumes can be attached to the VSA proxy during cross-hypervisor restores or live sync replication, occupying device slots xvdf - xvdz.

  3. Restore data to EBS volumes.

    A snapshot of the EBS volumes is taken and retained as an integrity snapshot for reference during the next incremental replication.

  4. Inject AWS components and drivers.

  5. Detach volumes from the access node.

  6. Create or reuse an instance based on the type of replication:

    • In case of a full replication, a new instance is created from the EBS volumes.

    • In case of an incremental replication, the EBS volumes are attached to the existing destination instance.

Linux:

  1. Create empty EBS volumes.

    Up to 40 volumes can be attached to the VSA proxy during cross-hypervisor restores or live sync replication, occupying device slots xvdf - xvdz, or if the slots start with xvd, then xvdba - xvdbz, or a combination of both.

  2. Attach EBS volumes to access node.

  3. Restore data to EBS volumes.

    A snapshot of the EBS volumes is taken and retained as an integrity snapshot for reference during the next incremental replication.

  4. Detach volumes from the access node.

  5. Create or reuse an instance based on the type of replication:

    • In case of a full replication, a new instance is created from the EBS volumes.

    • In case of an incremental replication, the EBS volumes are attached to the existing destination instance.

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